Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.)

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Private Bills (Standing Orders not previously inquired into complied with),

Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That in the case of the following Bills, referred on the Second Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely:

Bournemouth Gas and Water Bill.

Brixham Gas and Electricity Bill.

Radcliffe Farnworth and District Gas Bill

Romford Gas Bill.

Bills committed.

Provisional Order Bills (Standing Orders applicable thereto complied with),

Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders, which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely:

Bournemouth Corporation (Trolley Vehicles) Provisional Order Bill.

Bill to be read a Second time Tomorrow.

Provisional Order Bills (No Standing Orders applicable),

Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That in the case of the following Bill, referred on the First Reading thereof, no Standing Orders are applicable, namely:

Ministry of Health Provisional Order (Nuneaton Extension) Bill.

Bill to be read a Second time Tomorrow.

London Midland and Scottish Railway Bill (by Order),

Second Reading deferred till Tomorrow.

London Passenger Transport Board Bill (by Order),

Second Reading deferred till Monday next.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOUTH AFRICA.

PAN-AFRICAN CONFERENCE, 1936.

Mr. Mander: asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs the nature of the decisions arrived at as a result of the Inter-Colonial Conference at Johannesburg in September, 1936, when the Union of South Africa proclaimed a new Munro doctrine for application from the Cape to Kenya; and to what extent the Portuguese acting-Governor of Mozambique agreed with the sentiments expressed?

The Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs (Mr. Malcolm MacDonald): As indicated in my reply to the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Creech Jones) on 1st June last, the discussions of the conference were confined to technical questions relating to rail, road and air transport. There were no decisions of a political nature such as the hon. Member suggests. The last part of the question does not, therefore, arise.

Mr. Mander: Am I to take it that no understandings of any kind, official or unofficial, were arrived at?

Mr. MacDonald: None, except upon technical questions with regard to transport.

HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES.

Mr. Creech Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether further discussions have taken place with the Government of the Union of South Africa on the subject of the High Commissioner's Territories; and in particular whether any proposal for the transfer of Swaziland has been discussed; and what is the policy of the British Government on this matter?

Mr. M. MacDonald: The answer to the second part of the question is in the negative. With regard to the general question, I am not at present in a position to add anything to the reply which I gave on this subject to a question by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Donner) on 4th February.

Mr. Creech Jones: Are we to understand that at the moment no discussions are taking place in South Africa on the instructions of the Dominions Office, and is it a fact that Sir William Clark has not sounded the native representatives in the South African Parliament on the question of the transfer of Swaziland?

Mr. MacDonald: I dare say that from time to time all sorts of informal discussions take place, but no formal discussions of any kind have taken place, and the only discussions that are going on in South Africa at the present time are those between the High Commissioner, representing myself, and the Union authorities with regard to the correspondence to which I have often referred in reply to questions.

Mr. Creech Jones: When may we hope to know the nature of these discussions?

Mr. MacDonald: I cannot promise any date, but in the not too distant future I hope that some announcement can be made.

Mr. Creech Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs what are the terms of the new instructions issued to the British authorities in the South African Protectorates on the subject of the future relationships of the High Commission Territories to the Union of South Africa?

Mr. M. MacDonald: As explained in the reply which I gave on 4th November last, no new instructions have been issued to the officials in the Territories on this subject. I am, however, now considering, in communication with General Hertzog, what additional steps can be taken to carry out the policy agreed in 1935.

DOMINIONS (WAR MATERIAL, JAPAN).

Mr. Mander: asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether he has any information as to the position in Australia with regard to the refusal of the Waterside Workers Federation to load war material for Japan; whether similar action has been taken in other Dominions; whether he is aware of the extent to which war material is being shipped by the Dominions to Japan; and whether any co-ordinated Empire policy exists in this matter?

Mr. M. MacDonald: I have no information about the incident mentioned in the first part of the question beyond what has appeared in the Press. The only similar incident of which I am aware in other Dominions occurred in New Zealand, where the waterside workers on one occasion refused to load cargo on Japanese ships. With regard to the third part of the question, I have no precise information, but if by the term "war material" the hon. Member means arms and ammunition, I am not aware of any such shipments. As regards the last part of the question, I would remind the hon. Member of the resolution adopted at the Assembly of the League of Nations last year to which all the members of the British Commonwealth are parties.

Mr. Mander: Are not these workers in Australia and New Zealand giving a very fine lead to individuals throughout the Empire, and have not they set an example which we all might follow?

Oral Answers to Questions — EIRE.

CONSTITUTIONAL POSITION.

Mr. Emmott: asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether the subjects discussed at the meetings held in January between His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and His Majesty's Government in Eire included the subject of the constitutional position established by the Constitution which came into force on 29th December and by certain Acts passed in the Parliament of the Irish Free State immediately after the abdication of His Majesty King Edward VIII?

Mr. M. MacDonald: No, Sir.

Mr. Emmott: Can my right hon. Friend say what is the reason for that? Is it that there was nothing more to be said, or is it that there was so much to be said that there would be no time to say it?

Mr. MacDonald: I think my hon. Friend will remember that His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom made a statement defining its attitude towards the latest constitutional development in Eire on the day following the coming into effect of the new Eire Constitution.

Lieut.-Commander Agnew: Arising out of that reply, has His Majesty's Government


adopted the expression Eire as a correct and official way of describing what was formally known, by treaty, as the Irish Free State?

Mr. MacDonald: I think we are recognising and using the term which the people of Eire have constitutionally adopted.

BRITISH CAPITAL AND SETTLERS.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs the approximate amount of British capital invested in Eire; the estimated number of British people who have settled in Eire during the past 12 months; and whether there are any restrictions to such settlement?

Mr. MacDonald: No particulars are available as regards the matters raised in the first and second parts of this question. The reply to the third part of the question is in the negative.

SOUTHERN RHODESIA (PASS LAWS).

Mr. Creech Jones: asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether his attention has been drawn to decisions in the courts in Southern Rhodesia respecting the requirement that African voters must carry passes in accordance with Act 14 of 1936, even if they have been previously exempted in the terms of Ordinance 15 of 1913 from certain pass laws; and, as these decisions are not consistent with the principle of consolidation urged in justification of the 1936 Act, will he make representations that these regulations imposing subordinate status on the African people should be repealed?

Mr. M. MacDonald: As I stated in reply to a question by the hon. Member for North Camberwell (Mr. Ammon) on 3rd February, I have made inquiries about this matter, but I am not yet in a position to give any further information.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND.

TOURISTS' ACCOMMODATION, GREENOCK.

Mr. Robert Gibson: asked the President of the Board of Trade when last he had a report on the accommodation at Greenock for tourists landing from trans-Atlantic liners while they await attention from Government officials, in accordance with the law; and what proposals

he has to make for the modernising of the accommodation, in view of the demands that will be made on it arising out of the Empire Exhibition at Glasgow during the ensuing summer?

The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Oliver Stanley): I have had no report on this subject, but I understand that, following certain complaints, the interests concerned have been able to make improvements in the arrangements at Greenock, and that since these improvements were made there have been no further complaints.

Mr. Gibson: Is the right hon. Gentle man keeping in mind that Greenock is the first and principal port of call for liners coming from Canada to this country, and will he consider representations that Greenock should have an appropriate landing stage?

Mr. Stanley: I do not quite know what "an appropriate landing stage" is, but a number of improvements have been made, and I understand there is no complaint.

SCHOOL CHILDREN, KELTY.

Mr. Gallacher: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he is aware that, until recently, the Fife education authorities provided free omnibus transit in the dinner hour for school children from the school in Kelty to their homes in Kingseat and that, as a result of the withdrawal of these facilities, the majority of the children now have to make their lunch off sandwiches eaten in the street; and whether, in view of the probable ill-effects on the health of the children, he will arrange for the re-institution of free lunch-hour travel facilities?

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Elliot): The children referred to were able from 1932 to 1934 to take advantage of a mid-day service of omnibuses with the season tickets provided by the education authority; but the authority have-provided since 1934 by arrangement with the omnibus company for the issue of tickets available only in the morning and the afternoon. These arrangements are in accordance with the general practice of the education authority. I am informed that there is a room available in Kelty Public School, with facilities for heating food. I understand that the authority are at present directing the


attention of the local school management committee to the matter.

Mr. Gallacher: Is the Minister aware that a room allocated for cooking is not a suitable place for a large number of children, and in view of the fact that children used to be able to get home for their meals will he use his best offices to see that that practice is continued.

Mr. Elliot: I understand that the authority are drawing the attention of the local school managers to the matter.

ATTESTED HERDS.

Mr. R. Gibson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland why the county of Ayr has as many as 338 attested tubercle-free herds out of a total of 1,618 registered herds, while the county of Renfrew has only 30 out of a total of 444, and the county of Midlothian only 10 out of a total of 271, respectively, the percentages being 21, 6.7, and 3.7; what are the numbers of cows in the said attested and registered herds, respectively; and what proposals he has with a view to increasing the number of tubercle-free herds in the counties of Renfrew and Midlothian, respectively?

Mr. Elliot: The high percentage of dairy herds attested as free from tuberculosis in the county of Ayr as compared with the counties of Renfrew and Midlothian is due to the greater response which has been made by herdowners in that county to the inducements offered by the attested herds scheme as well as to the fact that dairying is generally more specialised and is of particular importance in Ayrshire. With regard to the second part of the question, as the reply contains a number of figures I will circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT. With regard to the last part of the question, I would draw the hon. Member's attention to Part IV of the Agriculture Act, 1937, which confers extended powers upon my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries to initiate schemes for the eradication of bovine tuberculosis in Great Britain. These powers will come into operation at an early date.

Following is the statement referred to:

The numbers of cows in attested herds in the counties of Ayr, Renfrew and Midlothian were respectively estimated at

10,834, 886 and 475 at 31st January-, 1938. The exact numbers of cows in registered herds in the same counties are not available but are estimated to be 47,000, 11,000 and 6,500 respectively.

GAMING MACHINES.

Mr. McLean Watson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether his attention has been called to the operation of a gaming machine known as the Bell fruit-gaming machine; and whether he proposes to take steps to prevent gambling on this machine?

Mr. Elliot: The reply to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. The use of gaming machines in shops and other places is already prohibited by the Gaming Machines (Scotland) Act, 1917. Convictions for contravention of the Act frequently take place.

Mr. Gallacher: Can the Minister say why, if the use of these machines is prohibited, the practice is so common in shops throughout Scotland?

Mr. Elliot: I am afraid I cannot say without notice.

COMMUNITY CENTRES.

Mr. Westwood: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland the names of the authorities which have submitted community centres for the approval of the Department of Health under the Housing Acts; what is the type of community centre approved; and do these centres become a charge upon the housing pool or the consolidated rate?

Mr. Elliot: Under the Housing (Scotland) Act, 1925, the Department of Health has approved the provision of community centres by the town councils of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greenock, Kilmarnock and Kirkcaldy and I propose, with the hon. Member's permission, to circulate particulars of these centres in the OFFICIAL REPORT. No other authorities have formally submitted proposals but a number have reserved space in layout plans for the provision of community centres, or otherwise have this question under consideration. With regard to the latter part of the question, the cost of community centres, so far as provided with approval under the Act, may properly be charged against the Housing Revenue Account.

Mr. Westwood: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that some of these authorities may have to abandon the community centre owing to the inadequate subsidy provided?

Mr. Elliot: That does not arise out of this question.

Particulars of Community Centres approved under the Housing (Scotland) Act, 1925.


Town Council.
…
Site.
Type of Centre.


Edinburgh
…
Craigentinny House
House after reconstruction to be used for accommodation of juvenile organisations and as club rooms for adolescents and adults.


Edinburgh
…
Niddrie Mains
Recreation hut for old men. To be used also by various organisations.


Glasgow
…
Hamiltonhill
This centre which is now established, is used for physical training classes, sewing and cooking demonstrations, lectures, gardening and football clubs and a savings bank. There is also accommodation for juvenile organisations. An extension is being made providing a new hall with workshops and a demonstration kitchen.


Glasgow
…
Knightswood
One building is to include a library; a public hall, a swimming bath; and a sun bathing deck. Another building is to be for youth and welfare movements and to have a large central hall for meetings, physical training and concerts; one wing to be devoted to juvenile organisation work and the other to women's interests. There is also to be an administrative office for local housing matters.


Greenock
…
Strone Villa
Strone Villa is being reconstructed as a temporary hall to be used for lectures and classes.


Kilmarnock
…
Knockinlaw House
This house is being reconstructed to provide a small library, reading room, two games rooms, a committee room, small office, and caretaker's house.


Kilmarnock
…
Townholm
Recreation hall to provide accommodation for games, concerts, lectures, etc.


Kirkcaldy
…
Strathkinnes Road Park Road.
A hall at each site is proposed with accommodation for artists. The Park Road hall will also be used for recreational purposes in connection with adjoining playing fields.

PHYSICAL TRAINING AND RECREATION.

Mr. Westwood: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland the names of the two authorities which have applied for grants under the Physical Training and Recreation Act?

Mr. Elliot: I am informed that 30 applications by local authorities for grants under the Physical Training Act are at present before the regional committees. The names of the two local authorities whose applications relate to the provision of community centres are the town councils of Aberdeen and Kilsyth.

Sir Samuel Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many local authorities in Scotland have taken powers under Clause 4 of the Physical Training and Recreation Act, 1937, to acquire, lay out, and equip holiday

Mr. Mathers: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think that the other authorities should now have their attention drawn to this matter and be urged to provide such centres?

Mr. Elliot: I will consider that.

Following is the statement:

camps or camping sites, within or without their area, either with or without charge; will he bring to their notice the action of the Scottish Council for Community Service in the Special Areas in Scotland in providing in 1936 two holiday camps for a period of 20 weeks at Rothesay and South Queensferry, and so enabling 3,343 families, comprising 17,739 individuals, to enjoy a week's holiday; and will he call attention to the statement of the commissioners as to the efficient organisation and beneficial results to the campers and urge upon local authorities the necessity of action on their part?

Mr. Elliot: I am informed that application for a grant towards the provision of a holiday camp has been made under the recent Act by the County Council of Ayr, and that under the appropriate statutory provision the education authorities of Dunbarton County and Aberdeen


Burgh are considering the establishment of camps for children and adolescents in their areas. The position in regard to the facilities which have been provided by the Scottish Community Service Council for the benefit of unemployed persons and their families in the Special Areas has been fully discussed between the Special Areas Commissioner and the Physical Training Grants Committee; and I am glad to learn that arrangements are being made to renew the grants which have been given from the Special Areas Fund for this purpose. I have no doubt that the Scottish Advisory Council and the regional committees, in reviewing local needs, will have full regard to the desirability of encouraging the provision of adequate camping facilities in their areas.

Sir S. Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many local authorities have exercised the powers or are taking steps to exercise the extension of powers given them by Clause 4 of the Physical Training and Recreation Act, to acquire, lay out, and provide with suitable buildings, gymnasiums, without grant from the Scottish Advisory Council, otherwise than those provided as community centres under the Housing Acts?

Mr. Elliot: I am informed by the Scottish Advisory Council that in connection with the general survey which is at present being carried out, all local authorities have recently been requested to furnish particulars of the various facilities for physical training and recreation, which are available in their area, and to bring to the notice of Regional Committees as soon as possible any new proposals, whether or not they involve an application for grant. Pending completion of the general survey, I regret that I am unable to supply the detailed particulars for which my hon. Friend asks.

Sir S. Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps are being taken for the training of leaders for the various branches of physical activity that may come under the scope of the Scottish National Advisory Council for Physical Training and Recreation?

Mr. Elliot: This matter has been receiving careful attention from the Scottish Advisory Council and the position is at present being investigated by the regional

committees in the different localities. I am accordingly not in a position to make any statement.

HOUSING.

Mr. Henderson Stewart: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he is contemplating any revision of the housing subsidies in Scotland; and, in particular, whether he proposes to increase the subsidy of £6 15s. per house granted under the Housing (Scotland) Act, 1935?

Mr. Westwood: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether, as a result of his discussions with the local authorities, he has any statement to make as to the rates of Exchequer subsidies that will be payable to local authorities after 31st March, 1938, under the Housing (Scotland) Acts, 1930 and 1935?

Mr. Elliot: Following discussions between the Department of Health and a special sub-committee appointed by the three associations of local authorities, it is my intention to submit to Parliament a draft order designed to continue the existing rates of subsidy under the Acts of 1930 and 1935 The discussions with the sub-committee will continue, with a view to examining proposals made by the sub-committee for a revision of the subsidies to take effect from 1st January, 1939. I am advised that, according to the Act of 1935, the draft order must relate to the whole of the period from 31st April, 1938, to the date of the next triennial revision, but this would be without prejudice to any decisions arrived at after the examination referred to.

Mr. T. Johnston: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that since the housing subsidies were fixed by the Act of 1935 the cost of building the average house in Scotland has gone up by over £110 and that the rate of interest on borrowed money has also increased, so that there is a strong case for the revision upwards of the subsidy?

Mr. Elliot: These considerations are being pressed on me very strongly by the local authorities.

Mr. Buchanan: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) the total number of houses built by the Glasgow Town Council during the past year, and how this number compares with the previous year;

(2) whether the progress made in the building of houses by the Glasgow Town Council during the past year has been satisfactory to the Department of Health; and whether any steps are being taken to increase the building of houses in view of the bad housing conditions which are now prevalent in the city?

Mr. Elliot: The corporation completed 1,841 houses in 1937 and 1,985 in 1936. I am not satisfied nor, I am sure, is the corporation, with this slow rate of progress, which has resulted mainly from the shortage of skilled building labour and to some extent of materials. There are signs, however, that more plentiful supplies of labour and materials are now becoming available and as the corporation are expediting the initial work of purchasing land, preparing plans, and constructing roads and sewers, they should be in a position to take full advantage of every improvement in the situation as it occurs. In addition, they propose to make experiments in the building of concrete and timber houses. I am in constant touch with the corporation and will continue to take every possible step to expedite housing progress in the city.

Mr. Boothby: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that the Glasgow Corporation are, in fact, doing everything that lies in their power to expedite building?

Mr. Elliot: I am not satisfied with any local authority or, indeed, with my own endeavours as long as the situation remains as it is.

Mr. J. J. Davidson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Glasgow Corporation, in a recent by-election, placed their housing policy before the people in a certain area, and that the Labour candidate was returned by an overwhelming majority?

Mr. Buchanan: If that is the defence for keeping slums, then I give it as a present to the hon. Member for Maryhill (Mr. Davidson).

AIR-RAID PRECAUTIONS.

Mr. Davidson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland the number of air-raid protection schemes submitted by Scottish local authorities up to date, and the number accepted by his Department?

Mr. Elliot: As indicated in my reply to a question addressed to me by my hon.

Friend the Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) on the 10th instant, nine local authorities in Scotland have submitted air-raid general precautions proposals and 22 have submitted fire precautions proposals either separately or in combination; these were all submitted before the regulations were circulated to local authorities on 28th January, and are of varying degrees of completeness. No schemes have yet been finally approved.

POOR LAW RELIEF.

Mr. Davidson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland the total amount paid in Poor Law relief in Scotland for the years ended January, 1935, and 1938, respectively?

Mr. Elliot: The total cost of poor relief in Scotland for the year ended on 15th May, 1937, the latest year for which figures are available, was £6,693,237 and the total for the year ended on 15th May, 1935, was £6,563,337. Against these sums there falls to be offset grant under the Unemployment Assistance (Temporary Provisions) (No. 2) Act, 1934, which was payable in respect of the period from 1st March, 1935, to 31st March, 1937. This grant amounted to £390,100 in 1934–35 and to £1,381,058 in 1936–37.

Mr. Davidson: Is the Minister aware that, even taking into consideration the grant which was made to these authorities. Poor Law relief has increased by millions of pounds in Scotland since 1931; and may I ask whether there is any method in his Department whereby previously registered unemployed who are now obtaining Poor Law relief can be submitted with this figure in order to show the true position in Scotland?

Mr. Elliot: The hon. Gentleman put down a question relating to 1935 and 1938. If he wishes the figures for 1931, perhaps he will put down that question, too.

Mr. Davidson: I was asking the Minister whether he was aware that both 1935 and 1938 show considerable increases over the figures of 1931, and whether he has any method whereby he can show the number of registered unemployed year by year who are put on to Poor Law relief, because it is the opinion of many people that the increase is due to the transfer of registered unemployed?

Mr. Elliot: I think the hon. Gentleman ought to put those questions down.

FREE MEALS (SCHOOL CHILDREN, GLASGOW).

Mr. Davidson: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland the total number of school children in Glasgow receiving free meals as a result of medical or teachers' recommendation for the years ended January, 1937, and 1938, respectively?

Mr. Elliot: The total numbers of children who received free meals in the two years referred to were 12,245 and 11,764 respectively.

POULTRY INDUSTRY.

Mr. Mathers: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he is now in a position to make a statement of policy in relation to the poultry industry in Scotland?

Mr. Elliot: My hon. Friend will be aware of the terms of the reply given yesterday to questions on this subject by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. I propose to confer as soon as practicable with producing and distributing interests in the poultry industry in Scotland to ascertain their views on the report of the Poultry Technical Committee and on the possibility of control of distributive functions.

Mr. Mathers: In view of the fact that yesterday's answer and the answer now given by the right hon. Gentleman involve a certain amount of delay, which is serious for those concerned, may I inquire when it is likely that we shall have a statement of Government policy on this matter?

Mr. Elliot: I could not say in advance until the consultations have been completed with the organisations concerned.

MINISTRY OF PENSIONS (AREA OFFICE, EDINBURGH).

Mr. Mathers: asked the Minister of Pensions when it is intended to remove the Edinburgh area office from McLeod Street to a more central situation in the city; and whether the exact location can be indicated?

Mr. Grimston (Lord of the Treasury): I have been asked to reply. I am informed that the removal of this office is not in contemplation. The present premises, which the Minister has personally inspected, are held by his Department on lease on very favourable terms;

they are adequate to the Ministry's needs, and, being of one storey only, are convenient for limbless and other badly disabled pensioners. The office, moreover, is situated in a district in which many pensioners live, and is within easy access from the centre of the city and principal railway stations.

Mr. Mathers: Am I to understand that answer to convey that the question of the renewal of this office has not been under consideration?

Mr. Grimston: I do not think the hon. Gentleman should understand that. If he cares to confer with my hon. Friend on the matter, I am sure my hon. Friend will be very happy.

FACTORIES ACT.

Mr. Walker: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he proposes to issue a circular to local authorities in Scotland upon the Factories Act, 1937?

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd): A memorandum for local authorities containing information relative to the Act is in course of preparation, but there are various matters to be dealt with before it can usefully be issued, and my right hon. Friend cannot at present fix a date.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE.

WAR MATERIAL (EXPORT LICENCES).

Lieut.-Commander Fletcher: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can give particulars of the licence granted during November, 1937, to Messrs. Vickers, Armstrong, for the export of machine-gun sets to Japan?

Mr. Stanley: No licences were in fact issued during November, 1937, for the export of war material of any description to Japan; but, as I have previously explained in this House, His Majesty's Government consider that it is contrary to the public interest to publish particulars of licences issued for the export of arms and ammunition to particular destinations.

Mr. Thorne: Is it not a fact that licences have been given for the export of arms to other countries, and that they are re-exported from those countries to Japan?

Mr. Stanley: I was merely asked about Japan.

Mr. Noel-Baker: Is it not possible for the right hon. Gentleman to insist upon the condition that they shall not be re-exported to Japan? Has that not been done before, and should it not now be done, in the public interest?

Mr. Stanley: That is a different question, and if the hon. Member wishes to ask it, perhaps he will put it on the Paper.

GREAT BRITAIN AND UNITED STATES (TRADE AGREEMENT NEGOTIATIONS).

Mr. Charles Brown: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether and in what manner representatives of the Dominions are taking part in the negotiations concerning a new Anglo-American trade agreement?

Mr. Stanley: The Governments of the overseas Dominions are not taking part in the negotiations for a trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the United States, but they have been, and will continue to be, kept informed of the progress of the discussions. The hon. Member will be aware that negotiations between Canada and the United States for a new trade agreement are likely to take place at Washington concurrently with the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the United States.

Mr. Roland Robinson: asked the President of the Board of Trade what progress has been made in the negotiations for a trade agreement with the United States of America?

Mr. Stanley: There is nothing that I can usefully add at present to the reply which I gave on 1st February to questions by the hon. Members for Colchester (Mr. Lewis) and Wolverhampton, East (Mr. Mander) except that the Delegation which is to assist His Majesty's Ambassador in the negotiations will leave for Washington to-morrow.

PRESERVED HAM AND BACON (IMPORTS).

Mr. Turton: asked the President of the Board of Trade why the recommendations made by the Import Duties Advisory Committee relating to ham and bacon preserved in air-tight containers, and dated 5th March, 1936, were not published till last month; and what action

the Government propose to take upon the recommendations?

Mr. Stanley: A decision on the recommendation of the Import Duties Advisory Committee relating to ham and bacon preserved in air-tight containers was deferred pending discussions with representatives of the principal foreign supplying countries. As was announced in a Press notice issued by the Board of Trade on 3rd January, arrangements have now been made for reducing the exports to this country to a level which should enable United Kingdom manufacturers to secure a satisfactory share of the home market. In these circumstances, it has been decided not to give effect for the present to the recommendation of the Committee, provided that the voluntary arrangements for the limitation of exports to the United Kingdom operate satisfactorily. The recommendation was published as soon as practicable after this decision was reached.

Sir Percy Harris: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that these new proposals to limit supplies will not raise prices to the consumers, and does he not realise that this commodity is an essential food diet for the mass of the people?

TEXTILE INDUSTRY (FASHION DESIGNING).

Mr. Liddall: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he will consult with the Association of British Chambers of Commerce in order to ascertain, from its constituent chambers in the textile manufacturing districts, whether they would welcome the setting up of a national institute of costumes and textile fabrics as a means of educating fashion-designers for the trade, in view of the recent offer by a private collector to present his collection of costumes and fabrics of the past centuries for the use of the public?

Mr. Stanley: If the Association of British Chambers of Commerce desire to make any representations to me on this subject, I shall be glad to take their views into consideration.

JAPANESE GOODS (MARKING).

Mr. Watkins: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether it is compulsory for manufactured goods imported from Japan to be marked with the name of the country of origin or whether the word "Foreign" is all that is necessary?

Mr. Stanley: Where an indication of origin is required under the Merchandise Marks Act, 1926, on goods imported from a foreign country, it can consist, at the option of the person applying the indication, either of the word "Foreign" or of a definite indication of the country in which the goods were manufactured or produced.

Mr. Watkins: In view of the fact that there is in this country a very large number of people who want not to buy Japanese goods, can the right hon. Gentleman make some arrangement so that Japanese goods are clearly marked with the name of the country of origin?

Mr. Stanley: It is not a question of making arrangements. This is the law as it stands. The whole question of whether the law should provide for the definite indication of the country of origin or simply for the word "Foreign" was very fully discussed at the time of its passage not so long ago, and the conclusion come to was that the provisions of the existing Act were the best.

Mr. Thorne: Does the right hon. Gentleman not know what is going on in London and other ports of the country, about the effort to boycott goods from Japan, and that people are in difficulties because they do not know in some cases where the goods come from?

Mr. Mander: Can the President say in what proportion of cases the word "Japanese" is put on and in what proportion only the word "Foreign"?

Mr. Stanley: Not without notice. If the hon. Member will put the question down, I will try to find out.

CORSETS.

Mr. Ralph Beaumont: asked the President of the Board of Trade what is the rate of duty levied upon corsets imported into the United States of America?

Mr. Stanley: Corsets on importation into the United States of America are dutiable at 50 per cent. ad valorem or, if composed wholly or in part of elastic fabric, at 55 per cent. ad valorem, or, if ornamented with embroidery or lace, at 90 per cent.

Mr. Riley: Does the same duty apply to corsets for ladies and men?

Mr. Stanley: I think the hon. Member had better put that question down.

Mr. R. Beaumont: asked the President of the Board of Trade the number of corsets imported into the United Kingdom from the United States of America in each of the last five years?

Mr. Stanley: As the answer involves a number of figures, I will, with my hon. Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Beaumont: Can my right hon. Friend say whether these figures show a steady increase?

Mr. Stanley: My hon. Friend will have to judge from the figures. They appear to me to show some increase.

Mr. Sandys: Is my right hon. Friend aware that what the House really wants to know is whether there has been any appreciable restriction in volume?

Mr. Vyvyan Adams: Cannot my right hon. Friend tell us in round figures?

Following is the answer:

Separate particulars of the imports of corsets are not available, but the numbers of corsets, corset-belts, brassieres and the like imported into the United Kingdom and consigned from the United States during the last five years were as follow:



Dozens.


1933
8,087


1934
14,791


1935
16,966


1936
21,138


1937
27,309

GAUMONT BRITISH PICTURE CORPORATION, LIMITED.

Mr. Bellenger: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has considered the applications from more than 3,000 shareholders of Gaumont British Picture Corporation, Limited, representing upwards of 1,000,000 shares, asking for an investigation into the-affairs of the company; and what action he proposes to take?

Mr. Stanley: An application has been received from certain shareholders of the Gaumont British Picture Corporation, Limited, for the appointment of an inspector to investigate the affairs of the


company under Section 135 of the Companies Act, 1929, and the matter is under consideration.

Mr. Bellenger: Has the right hon. Gentleman received applications from the statutory 10 per cent.?

Mr. Stanley: Yes, Sir. This is the statutory application to which I referred.

Mr. T. Williams: Can the right hon. Gentleman give any reason why at the time of the annual meeting they had only 75,000 shareholders, and now they have over 1,000,000?

WAR RISKS (INSURANCE).

Mr. Dobbie: asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware of the difficulty of persons buying their houses through building societies covering their property for insurance against damage by enemy aircraft; and whether the Government will take the necessary steps to ensure the provision of this class of insurance?

Mr. Stanley: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. As to the second part, I cannot add to the answers I gave on 2nd and 9th November to the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Joel).

Mr. Noel-Baker: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is widespread anxiety about this question of insurance, and will he give it his very careful consideration?

Mr. Stanley: As I have explained in answer to a number of questions in the House, the Government do not think this is a subject for insurance, but they are considering the possibility and practicability of a scheme for compensation which could be put into effect on the outbreak of hostilities.

Mr. T. Williams: Can the right hon. Gentleman inform the House when he is likely to be able to make a statement to allay the anxiety felt by small house owners?

Mr. Stanley: I cannot at the moment.

COAST EROSION.

Mr. R. Robinson: asked the President of the Board of Trade in what circumstances compensation is paid to

owners or occupiers of properties situated on the sea coast in respect of damage due to coast erosion or damage by the influx of sea water.

Mr. Stanley: The general question of coast erosion was considered by a Royal Commission which reported in 1911, and recommended that there was no ground, from a national point of view, for assistance to be given from public funds towards the cost of sea defence works perse.) This recommendation has been accepted by successive Governments, and no provision is made either for grants towards cost of purely sea defence works or for the payment of compensation in cases where properties on the sea coast suffer damage from coast erosion or the influx of sea water.

Mr. Robinson: In view of the exceptional damage done by sea water during the past few months, will the right hon. Gentleman consider taking some action in this matter?

Mr. T. Williams: While all this land on the coast is privately owned, does the right hon. Gentleman think it fair that the taxpayer should have to pay for the maintenance of other people's property?

Sir P. Harris: Are the Government prepared to sit idly by and see a part of England swept away?

Mr. Stanley: Surely that would be in accordance with the doctrine of the Little England school.

Mr. Loftus: Have any of the other recommendations of the 1911 Royal Commission been embodied in legislation?

Mr. Stanley: Perhaps my hon. Friend will put that question down.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that people living in mining areas who suffer from mining subsidence should have the first call?

MERCANTILE MARINE (OIL-BURNING VESSELS).

Mr. Day: asked the President of the Board of Trade the total tonnage of shipping registered under the British flag for the 12 months ended to the last convenient date, and the amount of this tonnage that was fitted to bum oil under boilers?

Mr. Stanley: During the 12 months January to December, 1937, the tonnage of ships reported as registered under the British flag under Part I of the Merchant Shipping Act, amounted to 1,127,148 tons gross. Of this, the total gross tonnage of steamships was 612,115, of which 220,666 gross tons are known to be fitted to bum oil under boilers.

Mr. Day: Are figures available showing the amount of tonnage that bums oil and coal at one time?

Mr. Stanley: If the hon. Member wants further information, perhaps he will put the question down.

Mr. Day: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the tendency is to burn oil?

BRITISH IMMIGRANTS (CANADA AND AUSTRALIA).

Mr. Day: asked the President of the Board of Trade the numbers of British subjects who were recorded as leaving permanent residence in Great Britain to take up permanent residence in Canada and/or Australia for the 12 months ended the last convenient date?

Mr. Stanley: The numbers of British subjects who were recorded in the passenger returns furnished to the Board of Trade as leaving permanent residence in Great Britain to take up permanent residence in Canada and Australia in the year 1937 were 2,663 and 4,010, respectively. Residence for a year or more is treated as permanent residence for the purpose of this classification.

Mr. Day: What funds do these Canadian immigrants have to find instead of finding their own passage money?

Mr. Stanley: I could not say without notice.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH ARMY.

CONTRACTS (PROFIT ON COST).

Mr. Mander: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will give an assurance that the War Office regards the 15 per cent. profit on cost authorised by the Air Ministry in certain special cases as being an exceptional rate which would only be regarded as proper by the War Office in exceptional cases?

The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Hore-Belisha): Yes, Sir.

ANTI-TANK GUNS.

Mr. Bellenger: asked the Secretary of State for War what is the present position regarding the equipment of units in the Army with anti-tank guns; and whether there is any manufacturing delay in supplying peace-time establishment requirements?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: I hope the hon. Gentleman will agree to the invariable practice of non-disclosure of such information.

Mr. Bellenger: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that a shortage is obvious to foreign attachés when they come to our manoeuvres, so why cannot he give the House some sort of information on this matter?

HIGHER COMMAND.

Mr. Bellenger: asked the Secretary of State for War whether any further reorganisation in the higher command is to take place in the near future?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: No, Sir.

Mr. Bellenger: Can the right hon. Gentleman say that reorganisation of the higher command is now complete?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: Yes, Sir.

FIRES, WOOLWICH.

Mr. Thorne: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he can give any information in connection with three fires in the miliary building at Woolwich; and what was the amount of damage and the cause of the fires?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: Three fires occurred between 29th and 31st January last. The first was at the offices of the Depot Brigade, Royal Artillery, the second at the Royal Engineers' Yard, Connaught Barracks, and the third at the Medical Inspection Room, the estimated damage being £400, £1,450, and £45, respectively. The circumstances have been investigated, but it has not been possible to establish definitely their causes.

Mr. Thorne: Do I understand that they are laid down in a special report?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: I do not think there is a special report.

PHYSICAL TRAINING INSTRUCTORS.

Sir Francis Fremantle: asked the Secretary of State for War whether, in order to improve the facilities for physical training in the Territorial Army, he will arrange for qualified physical training instructors of the Regular Army, on completion of their seven years' service, to be attached to the Territorial Army instead of to the Reserve of the Regular Army?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: I have no power to compel any such soldiers to extend their Colour Service from seven to twelve years. If the arrangement suggested were on a voluntary basis, there would be no means of ensuring a proper distribution of instructors.

Sir F. Fremantle: Is it not a fact that at the present moment some 300 of these non-commissioned officers go into the Reserve and are not allowed to put in for this job, and, therefore, that all the excellent physical training given them is wasted at a time when these instructors are very much wanted?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: It is the duty of the permanent staff instructors.

Sir F. Fremantle: Is it not possible that these excellent 300 men can be included in the permanent staff that is so much wanted?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: I have answered that part of the question and shown the difficulty.

Sir F. Fremantle: Does my right hon. Friend mean that it is impossible to use this excellent material in the way required? Surely he can see some way round it?

ANTI-AIRCRAFT ARTILLERY CAMP (SITE).

Sir Thomas Cook: asked the Secretary of State for War whether any progress has been made in respect to finding an alternative site to Stiffkey, Norfolk, for the proposed anti-aircraft artillery camp?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: Two possible alternative sites have been suggested by residents in the neighbourhood and are now-being examined.

MARRIED MEN.

Major-General Sir Alfred Knox: asked the Secretary of State for War how

many married men have recently been recruited; how many of these men have been allotted married quarters; and whether separation allowance is given to the wives of the remainder?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: Married men under the age of 26 are not accepted as recruits unless they can show that their families are adequately provided for. During January last of 34 married men accepted, 17 fulfilling this condition were under 26 years of age. The remainder would be in receipt of marriage allowance.

Sir A. Knox: What is the amount of the marriage allowance?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: It depends upon the period served, on the rank, and so forth, but it is between 7s. and 10s.

RESERVE.

Sir A. Knox: asked the Secretary of State for War the average number of men who passed annually to the Reserve in the four years 1934 to 1937?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: For the four years ending 30th September, 1937, the average number was 15,442.

OFFICERS (DEFICIT).

Sir Nicholas Grattan-Doyle: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will state for some recent convenient date the deficit of officers in the Regular Army and Territorial Army, respectively?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: On present establishments the Regular Army on 1st February was deficient of 731 officers and the Territorial Army of 1,133.

OVERSEAS SERVICE.

Sir N. Grattan-Doyle: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will state for some recent convenient date the numbers of the Regular Army serving overseas and, separately, the number serving in India and Burma?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: On 1st February, 91,868 officers and men of the Regular Army were serving overseas. Of this number 52,350 were in India and 1,502 in Burma. The above figures exclude some 3,660 locally raised regular troops.

Sir A. Knox: Have not the garrisons in India been very much reduced? They used to be 60,000.

Mr. Hore-Belisha: They have not been reduced in recent months.

STRENGTHS AND DEFICITS.

Sir N. Grattan-Doyle: asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will state for some recent convenient date the strength, respectively, of the Regular Army, the Army Reserve, the Supplementary Reserve, and the Territorial Army; and the deficit in establishment on the same date in the Regular Army and the Territorial Army?

Mr. Hore-Belisha: As the answer contains a number of figures, I will, with my hon. Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the answer:


(i) Strength of the military forces on 1st February.


—
Officers.
Other Ranks.
Total.


Regular Army
12,595
186,502
199,097


Regular Army Reserve.
—
126,474
126,474


Supplementary Reserve.
1,735
22,432
24,167


Territorial Army
9,104
149,803
158,907


(ii) The deficits, all ranks, on present establishments, in the Regular and Territorial Armies on 1st February were 19,002 and 40,751 respectively.

BRITISH PUBLICITY.

Mr. Arthur Henderson: asked the Prime Minister whether the special Cabinet Committee, under the chairmanship of the Minister of Health, appointed to examine the general question of British news services, will consider the use of foreign services in the Dominions overseas, in view of their possible anti-British bias being detrimental to the dissemination of accurate British news?

The Prime Minister (Mr. Chamberlain): The hon. Member may rest assured that all aspects of this subject will be considered.

GERMANY (SHORT-TERM LOANS).

Mr. G. Strauss: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that an increasing number of short-term loans are being made to Germany by London financial houses; and whether His Majesty's Government propose to take any steps to stop this aid to Germany's rearmament?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir John Simon): No, Sir. I believe the trend is the other way to that suggested in the first part of the question, and the second part does not, therefore, arise.

Mr. Boothby: On a point of Order. Is there any method of stopping hon. Members putting questions that contain assertions which have no foundations in fact?

Mr. Strauss: Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries of the leading financial houses? He will find that the assertion in my question is correct. Will he say, if it is so, that the making of short-term loans to Germany is contrary to the policy and the desire of the Government and have it altered?

Sir J. Simon: The hon. Member will, I am sure, appreciate that my original answer was based on what I believe to be very careful information. If he has any information to the contrary effect, and will kindly let me know what is is, I shall be very glad to have it.

Mr. Strauss: I shall have much pleasure in doing so.

FOREIGN SHORT-TERM DEPOSITS.

Mr. G. Strauss: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that higher interest rates are paid by London banks on foreign short-term deposits than are paid in the other financial centres, thereby encouraging the influx of foreign currency to this country; and whether, in view of the fact that the operations of the Exchange Equalisation Fund in sterilising this influx involves heavy expense to the taxpayer, he will take steps to prevent this payment of excessive interest?

Sir J. Simon: In reply to the first part of the question, the rate of interest obtainable is not the only, or even the most important, factor in determining the international location of foreign short-term deposits at the present time. The answer to the second part of the question is in the negative.

COUNCIL OF FOREIGN BONDHOLDERS.

Sir John Mellor: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, in view of the appointment of members of


the Council of Foreign Bondholders being under the Act of 1898 exclusively in the hands of the Central Association of Bankers of London, of the London Chamber of Commerce, and of the Council itself, he will consider taking steps to amend the Act in order to secure that the Council shall be more widely representative of British holders of foreign bonds; and whether he will consider taking steps to require the Council, when the revision of the conditions of any foreign bonds issued in the United Kingdom is sought by a borrower or guarantor, to call a meeting of the British bondholders concerned before deciding to recommend acquiescence in any departure from the obligations of the bonds?

Sir J. Simon: The majority of the members of the Council of Foreign Bondholders are themselves holders of foreign bonds and large holders, such as the insurance companies and investment trust companies, are also represented on the Council. The Council is, therefore, widely representative of British holders of foreign bonds, and I do not consider that any alteration in the method of its appointment is called for. As regards the second part of the question, the Council call a public meeting when legal requirements make this necessary, but their usual practice is to consult a committee of representative holders of the bonds in question, and, in the light of the view of the committee and of those of the individual bondholders with whom the Council is constantly in touch, to publish an offer made by the foreign Government concerned and to state whether the Council recommend its acceptance or not. Such a recommendation does not bind the individual bondholders and it rests with them to decide whether or not to accept the offer. The Council have found by experience that the procedure which I have described is, as a general rule, the most effective method of ascertaining the views of bondholders and I see no reason to dissent from that view.

ESTATE DUTIES.

Mr. V. Adams: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will so readjust the scales of Death Duties that only those portions of estates which exceed certain figures shall be liable to increased rates of duty?

Sir J. Simon: I may remind my hon. Friend that the existing method of graduation of the Estate Duty scale has obtained since the inception of the duty in 1894, and I am not prepared to propose any change in the method of graduation of the scale of the kind suggested by him.

Mr. Adams: Is it not correct to say that under the present system it is often an advantage to beneficiaries if an estate is below rather than above a certain figure?

Sir J. Simon: I should like to see the figures which the hon. Member has in mind.

Mr. Adams: But is not that true at certain stages—when the estate reaches fresh stages of £1,000, and so on?

Sir J. Simon: If my hon. Friend has an anomaly that calls for correction, I can assure him that I should like to know it. I thought he was suggesting that there should be a change in the fundamental principle of the taxation affecting the total value of the estate.

Mr. Adams: But would not such a suggestion as is implicit in this question correct the kind of anomaly which I ventured to describe in my first supplementary question?

Sir J. Simon: I should like to see what the anomaly is.

Mr. Mander: Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer give an assurance that no further special concessions will be made to landowners at the expense of the rest of the community?

FOOTBALL POOLS.

Mr. Johnston: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been drawn to recent revelations in the Law Courts of the extraordinary exploitation involved in the football coupon gambling system; whether he is aware that the profits taken by the promoters, after all expenses are paid, amount to £2,000,000 per annum; and whether, in the public interest, he will consider the application of special taxation to these profits or adopt the Swedish system under which a statutory company conducts the monopoly on behalf of the State and provides the funds for the State physical fitness campaign out of the profits?

Sir J. Simon: My attention has been drawn to a series of articles in the Press with regard to the activities of these promoters. As regards the question of special taxation on the profits of these concerns, I would refer the right hon. Gentleman to the reply given by my predecessor to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, East (Mr. Hepworth) on 5th May, 1936. The suggestion of conferring a monopoly on a statutory company operating on behalf of the State raises wide general issues which cannot be determined solely by considerations of revenue and finance, and is not primarily a Treasury question. I doubt, however, whether such a proposal would command any wide measure of assent.

Mr. Johnston: Apart from the common form answer about budgetary intentions, is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this particular industry involves no risk to the promoters of it and that the exploitation is extraordinary; and is it not advisable in the public interest that the Government should take some steps, by taxation or otherwise, to minimise the public disadvantages of this system?

Sir J. Simon: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is right when he says that very large profits are made by the carrying on of this activity, and it is right to say that those large profits come under the full rigour of our taxation system.

Viscountess Astor: Is it not true that the Government did think of bringing this particular form of betting into the old Betting Bill, and that some of the Members of the Government were desperately against it, though the majority were for it?

Mr. H. G. Williams: May I ask my right hon. Friend what is the total rake-off which the Postmaster-General gets?

Mr. T. Williams: Has the Chancellor of the Exchequer in all his experience known a case where there are 9,000,000 willing subscribers to the Treasury, and does he not think he ought to hold out his hand in welcome?

Sir J. Simon: As long as I get the revenue I stand neutral.

Mr. Johnston: Has the right hon. Gentleman's attention been drawn by the Lord Advocate of Scotland to a recent Aberdeen case in the Law Courts where the commissions paid to touts for these

football pools came to 9s. in the pound, and does he know that in addition to that the promoters have an extraordinary rake-off, and that, therefore, something like only 9s. in the pound of the contribution is returned to the gamblers?

TOBACCO LICENCES (PRIVATE HOUSEHOLDERS).

Mr. Liddall: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury how many tobacco licences have been issued during the last 12 months to private householders?

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lieut.-Colonel Colville): I regret that the information requested is not available.

NATIONAL GALLERY (GIORGIONE PANELS).

Lieut.-Commander Fletcher: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether, in view of the fact that the director of the National Gallery is not prepared to maintain that the so-called Giorgione panels recently purchased can be ascribed with certainty to that artist, he will state what experts were consulted by the Treasury before a grant of public money for the purchase of the panels was approved?

Lieut.-Colonel Colville: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to my reply on l0th February to my hon. Friend the Member for East Dorset (Mr. Hall-Caine) from which he will see that Treasury sanction is not required for expenditure from the grant-in-aid made to the National Gallery.

Lieut.-Commander Fletcher: In view of the very large expenditure of public money involved, are the public not entitled to know what experts were consulted, and what their advice was?

Lieut.-Colonel Colville: The practice is for Parliament to vote annually a grant-in-aid which is placed at the disposal of the trustees and used, entirely in their discretion, for the purchase of works of art. They decided to make this purchase and I do not question their wisdom.

Lieut.-Commander Fletcher: But are not the trustees expected to exercise ordinary precautions, and can the right


hon. and gallant Gentleman quote the name of a single expert who is prepared to say that these paintings are by Giorgione?

Oral Answers to Questions — COAL INDUSTRY.

SELLING SCHEMES.

Mr. David Grenfell: asked the Secretary for Mines whether he will state for each area having separate selling schemes the number of transactions in which coal is sold by the colliery owners to a purchaser who is not himself the direct representative of an industrial coal-consuming concern or a retail distributor of coal for domestic consumption; and whether he will give the proportion of total tonnage under all the selling schemes which is sold direct from the pit to the consumer or retail distributor?

The Secretary for Mines (Captain Crookshank): This information is not available in my Department.

Mr. Grenfell: Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman inform the House why his Department has no information on methods of disposal, prices and the cost of selling coal, in order that the consumers may determine whether they are having fair treatment in this matter?

Captain Crookshank: The hon. Gentleman's question asked about a number of transactions, and my reply was that I had not the information.

Mr. H. G. Williams: Can my hon. and gallant Friend indicate in what way we can find out the truth about this ramp?

Mr. James Griffiths: Has the hon. and gallant Gentleman asked the coal-supplying organisations in the districts, and is it the fact that his Department has made the request for the information and has been refused?

Mr. Grenfell: asked the Secretary for Mines whether records of sales are kept in each selling-scheme area; and whether he will state the tonnage in each area sold to purchasers who are the selling agents for the collieries from which the coal was purchased?

Captain Crookshank: This is the case in some selling-scheme districts, but may not be the case in all. I regret that the information asked for in the second part of the question is not available.

PRICES.

Mr. D. Grenfell: asked the Secretary for Mines the number of complaints made to his Department by industrial consumers on the grounds that prices are excessive and that they are unable to secure redress or consideration by the investigating committees for the area, with the aggregate tonnage involved; and whether he has been able to offer any promise of satisfaction to the aggrieved parties?

Captain Crookshank: Three complaints, involving in the aggregate about 275,000 tons, have been made to my Department by persons who have failed to convince committees of investigation that their complaints against the price of coal were well-founded. The assurances by the coal industry announced in the House on 7th February, and the provisions of Schedule 8 of the Coal Bill, which provide for an appeal from the decision of the committees, are generally designed to meet these and other difficulties brought to my notice.

Mr. Grenfell: Am I in order in asking the Prime Minister whether, when a question has been put to a Minister repeatedly and no information is forthcoming, he will authorise the Minister to obtain it?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member can hand in a question at the Table.

Mr. Thorne: The hon. and gallant Gentleman ought to be called the Minister for chloroform.

Miss Ward: asked the Secretary for Mines whether he will institute an inquiry into the discrepancy existing between the ascertained pithead price for coal and the prices charged to the general domestic consumer?

Mr. E. Smith: asked the Secretary for Mines whether, in view of the wide margin between the pithead price of coal and the price charged to the domestic consumer, he will take steps to have the matter investigated?

Captain Crookshank: No, Sir, but I understand that in most districts the question of the margins between wholesale and retail prices of coal is at present being reviewed by the selling scheme authorities and by representatives of the distributors.

Miss Ward: In view of the expression of opinion in all quarters of the House, would it not be in the general interest for an investigation to be instituted?

Captain Crookshank: rose—[Interruption.]

Mr. De la Bère: "Polly winked an eye, Polly gave a sigh."

Miss Ward: What pressure would bring an answer from my hon. and gallant Friend?

Mr. Shinwell: In view of the undoubted grievances of coal consumers, particularly domestic consumers, in relation to the disparity between pithead and retail prices of coal, and more particularly because of the confusion that ensued in the Coal Bill Debate in Committee, will the Minister advise his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to institute a public inquiry into the whole of these transactions?

Captain Crookshank: That seems to be the same question in another form.

Mr. Shinwell: Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman furnish any adequate and substantial reason why there should not be a public inquiry at a time when consumers are stating their grievances all over the country?

Mr. E. Smith: Is not the Minister aware of the deep public concern about this question?

Sir P. Harris: Is there any reason why these Departments are not interested in the consumer and why we should be ignored, and is it not the special responsibility of the Secretary for Mines to see that the public are protected?

Captain Crookshank: I have already answered the question. I have said that I understand certain of these problems are being considered.

Mr. Shinwell: Might I also ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman—

Mr. Speaker: rose—

Mr. Shinwell: This is a very important matter. I beg to give notice—

Mr. E. Smith: On a point of Order. May I give notice that I will raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible moment owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the replies?

HOLDING COMPANIES.

Sir Walter Smiles: asked the Secretary for Mines whether he is aware that there are several holding companies registered in the United Kingdom which hold the majority of the shares in both colliery and coal distributing companies, and that it is the practice for these colliery companies generally to make losses and the distributing companies very handsome profits; and whether he will make inquiries into the extent of this practice with a view to putting a stop to it?

Captain Crookshank: I am not aware of the existence of holding companies of the nature described, and with regard to the second and third parts of the question I would point out that not only are the sales by all colliery companies controlled under the provisions of the selling schemes, but also that it is competent, under the wages ascertatainment machinery, for accountants acting on behalf of the workmen to ensure that sales to ancillary concerns, including distributing organisations, are included in the colliery books at a fair market price.

Sir W. Smiles: Has the Minister made inquiries as to the state of affairs in South Wales?

Mr. H. G. Williams: Will the commitees of investigation have the same freedom as the joint accountants?

Mr. Louis Smith: Is the Minister aware that there is growing feeling in the country and great doubt about these matters, and that investigation would clear them up?

Mr. Shinwell: Will the Minister consider the special position of subsidiary concerns established by colliery undertakings charging excessively high prices for coal, items of cost not entering into the wages ascertainment?

Captain Crookshank: That is a different question.

CANADA (RUSSIAN ANTHRACITE).

Mr. Day: asked the Secretary for Mines what information and/or complaints he has received regarding a large quantity of anthracite coal from Russia that has been sold to the Canadian market; and to what extent this will affect the export of coal from this country?

Captain Crookshank: I have received no recent information or complaints regarding the sale of a large quantity of Russian anthracite to Canada. Canadian imports of Russian anthracite during 1937 amounted to 154,500 tons. With regard to the second part of the question, as I explained in reply to a question by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Cardiff East (Mr. T. Morris) on 12th November, 1936, imports into Canada from Russia will not exceed 250,000 tons in any one year, so that the effect of Russian competition in the market is to that extent limited.

Mr. Day: Does the Minister's information show that negotiations are pending now for the delivery of large quantities to Canada from Russia?

Captain Crookshank: No, Sir, but I dare say this is the time of year at which contracts are being signed. I do not know.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Am I correct in understanding the Minister to say that he has received no complaints about this matter; and is it not the fact that the quantity of 250,000 tons which is the limit for the importing season compares with no imports at all from Russia two years ago?

Captain Crookshank: If the hon. Member will refer to the statement which I mentioned in my reply, he will see all that set out.

Mr. Day: Are we to understand that the Minister is doing nothing in this matter?

NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Pensions the number of widows and other women, respectively, who have been prosecuted by his Department since 1918 for fraudulent receipt of pension?

Mr. Grimston: I have been asked to reply. I am informed that there are no figures prior to 1922, but since 1st January of that year 327 prosecutions for obtaining, or attempting to obtain, pension by fraudulent misrepresentation were initiated against women pensioners, of whom 118 were widows.

Mr. Sorensen: Can the hon. Gentleman say what proportion of those charges were dropped?

Mr. Grimston: I am afraid not. Perhaps the hon. Member will put the question down.

Oral Answers to Questions — FORESTRY COMMISSION.

TIMBER (SALE).

Mr. Mathers: asked the right hon. and gallant Member for Rye, as representing the Forestry Commissioners, the proceeds during 1937 from the sale of timber grown by the Forestry Commissioners; for what purpose the timber was utilised; and whether steps are being taken to secure a market for other timber as it matures?

Colonel Sir George Courthope (Forestry Commissioner): In the forest year ended 30th September, 1937, the proceeds of sales of timber by the Forestry Commissioners amounted to £70,100. The large timber was converted into scantlings, the larger poles were used for various purposes such as telephone poles, while the thinnings were converted into pit props, fencing and rustic work. Systematic steps are being taken to secure markets as the plantations yield timber, for which purpose a utilisation officer is employed full-time. Detailed investigations have already been made by the Department regarding the requirements of the coalmining, box and packing case, shipbuilding and turnery industries.

Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: Is that all soft wood?

Sir G. Courthope: It is mainly soft wood, but not entirely.

EMPLOYÉS' WAGES AND CONDITIONS.

Mr. James Hall: asked the right hon. and gallant Member for Rye, as representing the Forestry Commissioners, whether, in view of the number of wage increases granted in industry generally and of the increase in the cost of living, the Commissioners intend to grant an increase in wages to their employés?

Sir G. Courthope: After careful inquiry, the Forestry Commissioners in April last granted an increase in wages to their forest workers. They do not at present propose to make a further increase.

Mr. Hall: What are the reasons why the Forestry Commissioners are not prepared to adopt the same standard as is adopted by good employers in this country?

Sir G. Courthope: Our standard of wages is in advance of relative wages in the rural districts.

Mr. W. H. Green: Can the right hon. and gallant Gentleman give an undertaking that, if the representatives of the men ask for an interview, such as frequently is granted by private employers, the Commissioners will accede to their request?

Mr. Hall: asked the right hon. and gallant Member for Rye, as representing the Forestry Commissioners, what reply was given to the application from the Transport and General Workers' Union for increases of wages for the Commissioners' employés?

Sir G. Courthope: The same answer was given to the application from the Transport and General Workers' Union as I have given to the hon. Member's previous question.

Mr. Hall: Are the Forestry Commissioners prepared to see the representatives of the Transport and General Workers' Union for the purpose of discussing new points?

Sir G. Courthope: There are no new points to discuss.

Mr. Hall: asked the right hon. and gallant Member for Rye, as representing the Forestry Commissioners, what complaints the Commissioners have received from their employés regarding their conditions of employment?

Sir G. Courthope: Proposals for alteration of the wages and working conditions of forestry workers were received from the Scottish Forestry section of the Transport and General Workers' Union regarding overtime, working hours and holidays.

Mr. Hall: Are not the Forestry Commissioners prepared to consider complaints which are brought to their notice?

UNEMPLOYMENT ASSISTANCE, LIVERPOOL.

Mr. Kirby: asked the Minister of Labour whether the officers of the Unemployment Assistance Board in Liverpool are instructed to ignore the first 20s. of disability pensions in assessing the needs

of applicants for unemployment assistance; and whether such instructions are strictly complied with?

Captain Dugdale (Lord of the Treasury): Yes, Sir.

UNITED STATES (MONETARY POLICY).

Mr. Attlee: (by Private Notice) asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his attention has been called to the announcement made yesterday in the United States of America by the Secretary of the Treasury in regard to the inactive gold account?

Sir J. Simon: Yes, Sir; I had been informed that it was the intention of the Secretary of the United States Treasury to make an announcement on these lines. The view which underlies the announcement, as I understand, is that it is desirable in present conditions to modify arrangements which may have or be feared to have a deflationary tendency and so act as a brake on business activity. With this view I cordially agree. I would add that the measure announced is in line with the general policy of easy credit which I have hitherto regarded and continue to regard as appropriate to this country.

Mr. Pethick-Lawrence: While I appreciate that the underlying object of the policy announced in the United States and of the policy which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is pursuing in this country may be similar, I take it that he does not suggest that the means which the United States are proposing to adopt are in any way identical with the policy which the Government are pursuing here? In the second place, I take it that if, as a result of the policy adumbrated in the United States, there should show itself any considerable change in the exchange value of the dollar, the Government will keep a very close eye on that, and prevent it from having a deleterious effect on British industry?

Sir J. Simon: As regards the first of the right hon. Gentleman's questions, I agree with what I think he implied, that the currency arrangements in the two countries are widely different. We have continuously avoided deflationary measures here, and I think our existing arrangements are adequate. As regards the


second question, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we must see if any results manifest themselves from the announcement in America, and we shall carefully watch the results and take action accordingly.

Mr. Grenfell: Is it not true to say that, when gold is bought up and segregated in large quantities, as in the case of America at the present time, that must always have a deflationary effect?

Mr. Graham White: Are not these considerations covered by the original tripartite agreement between America, France and ourselves?

Sir J. Simon: I think that the answer I gave to the right hon. Gentleman opposite really covers this point. Nothing that is here indicated is any sort of departure from the agreement. The principle of that agreement remains, and it is respected, I believe, by all the parties to it. We have no intention whatever of departing from it. Our methods are not quite the same as those which obtain in the United States, and I do not consider that, because this step has been taken in the United States, it follows that we should take exactly the same form of step, but we desire to maintain a common position.

MONEY BILLS (PROCEDURE).

Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew: I desire, Mr. Speaker, to raise a point of Order. Since the passing, on 1st February, of the new Standing Order dealing with Money Bills Procedure, Members of this House have no means of distinguishing between a Bill, the main object of which is the creation of a public charge, and a Bill which involves a charge that is subsidiary to its main purpose. Today, the first Bill involving expenditure since the passing of the new Standing Order is down for Second Reading. I understand that the Government propose to take one stage only of the Housing (Financial Provisions) Bill at to-day's sitting, and I conclude that this is the first Money Bill to be italicised. Now that both types of Bills involving expenditure are to be italicised, it will not be possible for Members to distinguish them. May I, therefore, respectfully suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that for the convenience of the House some method of labelling such Bills be adopted, so that

Members of the House can tell to which class a particular Bill belongs?

Mr. Speaker: If I can be assured that the general wish of the House is that some distinguishing mark should be put on the Order Paper, to distinguish between Bills which will come under the new Standing Order and those in which monetary proposals are subsidiary to the main purpose of the Bill, I shall be quite prepared to consider what method of distinguishing such Bills will be most convenient. I suggest something of this kind, that the words "in pursuance of Standing Order No. 64A," might be attached to the Motion for presentation of the Bill or Financial Resolution. If something of this kind will meet the convenience of the House, I shall be glad to see if it can be done.

Mr. Lees-Smith: My hon. Friends and I consider that something of the sort suggested is necessary in order to carry out what was the general desire of the House when the new Standing Order was discussed. It was the general desire of the House that there should be an interval of, at any rate, a day between taking the Second Reading and taking the Financial Resolution. For that purpose, it would be necessary to know whether Bills of this kind would be within the scope of the Standing Order or not. For that reason my hon. Friends and I would draw attention to the point either in the Bill or in the Financial Resolution.

Mr. Speaker: If something of the kind will meet with the approval of the House I am prepared to consider it and see whether it can be carried out.

Sir P. Harris: Is it possible for something to be printed on the Bill, for the convenience of private Members?

The Prime Minister: I would suggest that we should collect the views of the House through the usual channels, and convey them to you, Sir.

Mr. Speaker: I can only ascertain the views of the House in that way.

PATENTS, ETC. (INTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS) BILL [Lords].

Read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Thursday, and to be printed. [Bill 84.]

ARMY ESTIMATES, 1938.

Estimates presented for the Army for the financial year 1938 [by Command]; referred to the Committee of Supply, and to be printed. [No. 51.]

Orders of the Day — HOUSING (FINANCIAL PROVISIONS) BILL.

Order for Second Reading read.

3.55 p.m.

The Minister of Health (Sir Kingsley Wood): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
The purpose of the Bill is to provide continuing financial provision for the furtherance of our work in connection with slum clearance and overcrowding. It also makes special provision for agricultural housing, and to meet special conditions in a number of small urban areas. Provision is also made for a number of incidental purposes in connection with these proposals. Before I come to the exact proposals of the Bill, I would like to say a word or two, as I have no doubt the House will expect, on the present position in regard to these matters. Our present slum clearance programme covers about 400,000 houses. I am happy to inform the House that we have already made considerable progress. Some 800,000 people have gone from slums to new houses, with good conditions, and they are going still at the rate of 25,000 per month.
One of the most hopeful features of our present housing progress, particularly in this connection, and in that of overcrowding, is the fact that the number of small houses built for letting has steadily risen during the last few years. So far as overcrowding is concerned, the local authorities, as I think the House will realise, have been very actively engaged in slum clearance work, and, in addition, much work has been done, mainly of a preliminary kind, in eliminating the evil of overcrowding. The survey, of course, was a gigantic undertaking—the first of its character that has ever been made, I think, in the history of this country. That occupied a considerable time, and, even on the standard required by the Act of 1935, it showed that many thousands of houses were overcrowded, and that the people in them were living in very unhealthy conditions.
A serious beginning has now been made on the abatement of overcrowding. The fixing of the appointed days from which the statutory provisions began to operate against overcrowding is now practically

complete; in fact, I think it is complete except in some half dozen districts. The abatement of overcrowding itself also has already begun. Hon. Members may have observed the statement of the medical officer of one of our large cities recently that, by means of co-operation between the municipalities and the owners of property, some 30 per cent. of the cases of overcrowding in that city, as disclosed by the housing survey, had already been abated. I made inquiries myself from a number of authorities, and I received, in a number of cases, the reply that, by the same operation, some 20 per cent. of their overcrowding had been abated. I do not think it is always realised that the local authorities have actually in their control to-day some 1,000,000 houses—a supply of low-rented accommodation which gives many opportunities for overcrowded families to be rescued from the conditions in which they are living. But, notwithstanding that progress, the House, I think, will agree that overcrowding cannot be eliminated without the erection of a substantial number of new houses specially built for the purpose. Some 17,000 have been either built or approved for that purpose.
But, undoubtedly, one of the principal objects of this Bill is to enable further and continuous efforts to be made for people who are living in bad and overcrowded conditions. Let me say a few words about our immediate programme so that the House can visualise exactly what we have in front of us in these efforts. It was estimated that for the execution of our present programme—I emphasise that—for slum clearance and overcrowding, and overcrowding on the present standard—I emphasise that also—a total of 600,000 new houses were required, 400,000 for slum clearance and 200,000 for the abatement of overcrowding. The position to date is this: Towards this total some 200,000 have already been built, another 70,000 are now under construction, and I am glad to say that houses are being completed at the rate of about 7,000 a month. Of course I claim no particular credit for it, because the credit is due to others, but I think it will be generally agreed that we have had a satisfactory year.
The building of new houses is proceeding at a rate which should ensure the maintenance of the local authorities' programmes at the same rate during the


present year. The January figures show that 6,675 new houses were approved in that month. With the 8,742 approved in December and 7,065 in November, that is a total of 22,000 houses approved during the last three months—a substantial contribution to the building programme for the year 1938. The December figure of 8,742, which includes the comparatively large figure of 1,248 houses for general needs, was in fact, I am glad to say, the highest since August, 1935. It is a very welcome thing to be able to say to the House to-day for the first time that from the figures which have just reached me, since the Armistice the local authorities have built no fewer than 1,000,000 houses. I suggest that that is a great contribution to the needs of the people of the country. But having said that whilst recalling what has been done, I should not be doing my duty if I did not say as Minister of Health, and I think with the concurrence of every Member of the House, that much still remains to be done. There now remain about another 400,000 houses to be built to complete this particular effort, or five to nearly six years steady work at the present rate of building.
I ask the House to remember that with the building industry occupied as it is and has been for the last two years—the hon. Member for East Woolwich (Mr. Hicks) will no doubt confirm this—that broadly represents the amount of building that is immediately practicable. It is in these circumstances that the policy of the Government in urban districts is to concentrate Exchequer assistance on the provision of houses to deal with slum clearance and overcrowding. I emphasise both those great objects in conjunction, because unfit and overcrowded houses constitute the primary health problem in relation to housing. I do not hesitate to say that, much as I appreciate all that has been done, it will certainly need all the best efforts of the local authorities for several years to come to accomplish this work. Therefore, apart altogether from questions of policy, their energies are, and I have no doubt will be, concentrated on this vital work, and it will certainly take all their capacity and probably all available building labour for that purpose.
A few words about building prices. Fortunately, prospects are favourable on the whole. There is now a steadying in building prices. Local authorities are

receiving more tenders for work, particularly in the south, and more contractors are seeking contracts. I need hardly assure the House that my Department will in future, as in the past, maintain a constant scrutiny of tender prices submitted, and that we shall take action, as we have done hitherto when occasion has made it necessary, to defer a scheme for a short time, because undoubtedly that has had a good effect with regard to high tenders. All these things would seem to justify the hope that the peak has been reached and that prices are now steadying for a fall.
Now I come to the actual proposals of the Bill. The House will recollect no doubt that existing legislation provides that the Minister of Health shall review the financial assistance for slum clearance and overcrowding after the 1st October, 1937, and that we shall take into account—I emphasise this because these are the statutory provisions—the expenses which are to be incurred and have been incurred; by local authorities. In case anyone may attribute any sinister motive to this particular matter, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) will no doubt recall that that was one of the provisions in the Act of Parliament which no doubt he always regards with favour, he having assisted in placing it on the Statute Book—the Housing Act; of 1930. The then Minister of Health, like all Ministers of Health, was careful and pointed out to the local authorities in a circular that in each case, after review, the Minister might by order provide for a reduction of the grant under-each Act, and might also revise the normal rate charge to be taken into account in the fixing of rent under both' Acts. Under the Act also it is laid down that the Minister of Health, whoever he may be, shall consult with the associations of local authorities.
Let me say a preliminary word about a matter which has been put by many; local authorities and one on which the. House would desire some information. Under the Act of 1936 financial assistance at the rates now in operation is provided for houses completed by 31st March, 1938, and in order to secure continuity of work I announced some months ago that the proposals to be laid before Parliament would include provision for payment of the present rates of subsidy for houses completed by 31st December,


1938, which was an extension of nine months. I think that this assurance was generally appreciated by the authorities, and progress has thereby been maintained at the steady level which is so essential in the interests of our house-building programme.
Broadly, the arrangement proposed in the Bill is that houses completed not later than 31st December, 1938, will rank for subsidies fixed by the Acts of 1930 and 1935, and those finished after that date will rank for the subsidies fixed by this Bill. But the House will appreciate that certain transitional provisions are needed because of the change-over from one subsidy to another, and power is taken in Clause 10 to pay the subsidies for houses built in respect of the abatement of overcrowding or the general needs of the agricultural population included in contracts entered into after the introduction of the Bill, notwithstanding that the houses are finished before 31st December, 1938. I think that that provision will be generally acceptable to those who have raised this point, and it is included so that there shall not be any delay, which might otherwise occur, in building with the object of qualifying for the higher rate of subsidy.
I also provide in the Bill, following the precedents and examples of my predecessors, that a further review shall be made after 1st October, 1941, but that the contribution shall be payable on all houses completed by 30th September, 1942. Under this provision we shall therefore have a period of 12 months instead of six months between the date of the review and the possible operation of any change, because administrative considerations have shown that a longer period of notice than six months, the period previously provided, is desirable when changes are in prospect.
I would like to say a word or two on the new financial provisions and on two important changes which are being made. I believe that the two principal alterations suggested in the financial arrangements have generally commended themselves to the local authorities of the country, and I hope that they will be generally acceptable to the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Let me mention what they are before I hear those voices of dissent. The first is the fixing of the two subsidies for slum clearance and

overcrowding at the same level. There is at present a very substantial difference in the amount of the contributions for slum clearance and overcrowding, and there is at present payable a fixed subsidy of £2 5s. per person in respect of slum clearance, and a possible subsidy, but rarely admissible—[An HON. MEMBER: "Almost impossible."]—I am getting some assent, after all—not exceeding £5 for 20 years in respect of the abatement of overcrowding, with special subsidies for flats on expensive sites and for the agricultural population. I do not think that there is likely to be found, or that there has been found, such a difference in the economic position of those who live in unfit houses, on the one hand, and in overcrowded houses, on the other, as warrants any general difference in the rents of the houses built by the authorities for their accommodation.
The arrangements authorised by the Act of 1935 for the pooling of subsidies have undoubtedly been much appreciated by many local authorities who are now freed from the necessity of determining the rents for their houses by reference to the particular Act under which they were erected. That has been generally appreciated and I am anxious—and I hope that I shall carry with me all my colleagues in this House—that local authorities should be in a position to attack both the slums and overcrowding with equal vigour. Undoubtedly the present material difference in the amount of financial assistance available is not conducive to that end. Moreover, it will, no doubt, be advantageous if local authorities are freed from the necessity of considering the financial implications of the present alternative procedure and are in a position in the future to consider solely the housing necessities of the people concerned. Therefore, I propose in Clause 1 the payment of a uniform contribution for houses built for slum clearance, and the abatement of overcrowding and a similar merging of subsidies will apply to flats.
I come to a matter upon which there must be some misconception, especially from a glance at the terms of the Amendment which has been put down on behalf of hon. Gentlemen opposite. The second important alteration proposed is that the contribution shall take the form of an annual contribution for each house that is built, payable over a period of 40 years. All the local authorities' associations


and the London County Council consider this to be the most satisfactory course. I will give one example to the House, to illustrate the present difficulties. Take, for instance, the displacement of 10 persons. That might mean the building of any number of houses from two to live according to the number of families concerned, and the subsidy should vary accordingly. It was for that purpose that these proposals have been made. It is also undesirable to have two different bases of assistance for two halves of the one programme. I can tell the House, in support of the alteration which I am proposing this afternoon, that many local authorities have found that they are obliged to build as many new houses as there are families to be displaced. Therefore, considerations of practical convenience suggest the advantage of calculating both the Exchequer and the rate contributions upon the same basis, but I would remind those who are doubtful that, in fact, the rate contribution has always been charged upon the house basis, and that no alteration was made in that respect in the Act of 1930. I hope that hon. Gentlemen opposite will agree with me when, in view of the explanation which I have given, and of the desires of the local authorities themselves, I commend both these main alterations to the House this afternoon.
The new financial terms are important and, naturally, I desire to explain them to the House. I have had regard to three matters with reference to the new uniform contribution. I have had regard particularly to the amount of the existing contributions, as I am enjoined to do by an Act of Parliament and, as I properly should do, to the changes in the cost of building and interest rates which have taken place since these contributions were fixed and, as I hope I shall be able to assure the House, to the need for the further provision of suitable houses at reasonable rents. Many of my predecessors on several occasions have said that they have had the advantage of close consultation with the local authorities, that they have seen figures and calculations, and they have seen ours, and I express my appreciation of the assistance which once again they have given to my Department. As far as the division of the total subsidy between the Exchequer and the local authorities is concerned, I have adhered to the ratio fixed by Parliament

in 1935, under which the Exchequer pays two-thirds of the total subsidy, which I regard as favourable to the local authorities. This applies both to cottages and to flats. In considering the amount of the contributions I have had regard to the changes in circumstances which have occurred both in interest rates and building costs since they were fixed in 1930 and 1935.
To give an example of the matters which I have had to consider, there is the fact that interest rates have fallen by nearly 1½ per cent. since the subsidy was fixed in 1930. In the result, the uniform subsidy fixed by the Bill will, in respect of slum clearance operations, enable local authorities to let houses at practically the same rents as were contemplated when the slum clearance subsidy was fixed in 1930. Again, I do not think that due consideration has been given to this matter in view of the terms of the Amendment which appears on the Paper. At any rate, I see no acknowledgment of it. There is, of course, a considerable increase in financial assistance in connection with the overcrowding subsidy. As to rents, I will deal first with the cottages to be erected, for by far the greater part of the re-housing still to be done will be done by way of cottage building rather than the building of flats. In introducing the housing Bill of 1930 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield, my distinguished predecessor—

Miss Wilkinson: And successor.

Sir K. Wood: I hope that he will live long enough for that—estimated that with the aid of the subsidies to be provided under that Measure, it would be possible to accommodate one-half of the persons in houses where the rent would be as low as 5s. a week plus rates, and the other half in houses at rents of 7s. a week plus rates, an average of 6s. a week exclusive. This, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said at that time, and I think that it applies equally to-day, would be a substantial relief to the hard-pressed slum-dweller. He also emphasised, as one would expect him to do in his responsible position, that a grant of this kind could not be made permanent. Under these proposals, taking the non-parlour houses with three bedrooms, which may be taken as the normal type of house built by local authorities, the subsidy proposed


in the Bill will enable such houses to be built and let at rents between 6s. and 7s. a week exclusive. In view of the provision made for the pooling of subsidies in the 1933 Act, it will, of course, no longer be necessary to make a separate rent pool of these houses. The subsidy will be paid into the general Housing Revenue Account of each local authority and pooled with other subsidies, the rents being arranged as each local authority finds most suitable.
I emphasise, as has every Minister who has had to deal with this problem, that it is the average rents which I have to take into account. The rents which it is anticipated can thus be secured on the average under this Bill are approximately those aimed at by the right hon. Gentleman in 1930, and rather lower than those aimed at in 1935. The White Paper, which, the House will remember, I published in July, 1937, showed that the average rent of dwellings owned by local authorities was 6s. in rural districts, 7s. 2d. in county boroughs outside Greater London and 6s. 11d. in other urban districts. Under the proposals in this Bill local authorities will be able to provide houses at rents lower than those charged for existing houses in cases in which this is necessary owing to the circumstances of the tenant to be rehoused. If the new houses are let at the same average rent as those which I have mentioned, and which were shown in the White Paper, then the resources of the subsidy and rents pool will be increased. That is the position which I have tried to secure as far as cottage rents are concerned, and I hope that it will commend itself to the House.
A special provision is necessary for certain cases, such as the erection of flats. A contribution of £5 10s. may be regarded as the ordinary contribution payable for all cottages built in respect of slum clearance and overcrowding, but there is the case of blocks of flats on expensive sites in a few of our large towns in connection with which a specially high rate of contribution, varying with the cost of the site, is proposed. Special rates of subsidy were authorised in such cases under the Acts of 1930 and 1935. In this Bill the form follows that authorised by the Act of 1935, although the figures in that Act have been substantially increased on the amalgamation of the two subsidies.

The minimum contribution that will be payable on sites costing more than £1,500 and less than £4,000 will be the substantial sum of £11 a year for 40 years, as compared with £6 a year for 40 years under the Act of 1935. There is a considerable advantage in a graduated scale, because the price which has to be paid for land where it is necessary to build flats is subject to wide variations. It is for that purpose that I have adopted the method laid down in the Bill.
I am advised that the new flat subsidy will enable flats to be built at a rental of between 7s. and 8s. a week on the average. Those are flats consisting of two and three rooms, and in other cases four rooms. Questions have been put to me as regards our policy on the building of flats. The Government's policy is that we shall continue to encourage the building of cottages where practicable and the building of flats where it is essential to provide rehousing accommodation in such places as the centres of large towns, and where it is impracticable and uneconomical to build cottages. In practice, therefore, the question of whether flats or cottages should be built on a particular site is determined by housing needs.
Let me say a few words on the position which arises in those urban areas where exceptional conditions prevail. Clause I (3) contains a new provision which will authorise a supplementary Exchequer contribution of £1 for 40 years over and above the ordinary contribution of £5 10s. accompanied by an equivalent contribution of £1 from the county council—to meet the needs of a limited number of small urban areas with exceptional conditions. We are bound to lay down these conditions which may be indicated as follow: (1) a general level of working-class rents substantially below those applicable to the working classes in urban areas generally, and (2) the very limited financial resources of those districts. The number of districts that will satisfy these conditions will not be large, but experience has shown a real need for special assistance of this kind. Instances may be found in the small boroughs and urban districts of rural Wales—my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) has an intimate knowledge of some of them—of small and poor urban districts where new houses could not be provided


at suitable rents without an undue burden on the district. Lastly, in connection with the exceptional cases which we are endeavouring to meet as regards the non-agricultural population in the rural districts, I am advised that under the financial arrangements set out in Clause I it will be possible to provide cottages (A.3.) at a rent of 5s., with only the statutory rate contribution by the local authorities.
Let me deal with our proposals in connection with the agricultural workers. Some 3,500,000 houses have been built in England and Wales since the Armistice. That is an unparalleled figure. I do not think it has been approached by any other country in the world; but, notwithstanding these gigantic efforts, which are due to the local authorities, private enterprise and voluntary action, we have not been able to make sufficient provision for that section of people who are so vital to the nation—the agricultural workers. Undoubtedly, more and better housing is needed on the countryside. If we desire, as we all do desire in this House, that our people, particularly our young people, should remain on the countryside, we must provide them with housing conditions in which they can live happy, healthy and comfortable lives. There are three ways in which this can be done. We can attain it by improving sound, old houses. We can also do it by demolishing and replacing bad houses and, finally, by providing new houses for normal needs.
As regards the improvement and renovation of existing houses, I have noticed that a good deal has been written in the Press and other journals. Most people who have observed the figures will agree with me when I say that the Housing (Rural Workers) Act is proving an increasingly useful Measure. Approximately, 14,000 cottages have so far been repaired and reconditioned and made fit for habitation. The total number of dwellings in respect of which grants or loans have been promised under the Act is now about 17,000.

Viscountess Astor: Have those cottages running water?

An Hon. Member: Yes, through the roofs.

Sir K. Wood: We have been making further efforts to ensure that this Act shall be more widely known, and I am

glad to say that applications for grants and loans are increasing steadily. More useful work could be done under this legislation to secure improved living conditions for the occupants and also, which is very necessary to-day, to preserve many of our country cottages. The Government, therefore, propose to introduce legislation at an early date to extend the operations of this Act for four years, otherwise it would expire in June next.
I should like to tell the House the position of rural housing in the light of an examination which has been made concerning it by the Central Housing Advisory Committee of my Department, on which are some of the best housing experts in the country. I should like to express my indebtedness and the indebtedness of the House to the Bishop of Winchester and the members of his committee who have given so much time and attention to this important matter. The question has also been considered by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture and myself. All those who have served on that committee and my right hon. Friend and myself are satisfied that existing methods and machinery are not sufficient to enable new houses to be built for the general needs of the agricultural community and to be let at rents suitable to their resources. This is a special problem. The gap between building cost and the rents that are within the means of the agricultural workers is much wider than is the case elsewhere.
We also desire to bring about further substantial improvements in the conditions under which the agricultural workers live. The Housing Advisory Committee emphasise an important side of this problem. They point out that there is a shortage in certain parts of the country of cottages suitable for young workers. They also state that they believe that this is a material factor in driving young workers into the towns, notwithstanding the unsatisfied demand in many areas for competent agricultural labourers. The financial provisions of the Bill are designed to meet this problem and will enable cottages to be provided at average rents ranging between 3s. and 4s. per week, exclusive of rates. I do not think there can be any doubt that in this way we can immeasurably improve the lot of our agricultural workers and do much to make the industry more attractive, particularly to the younger generation.


We have added a provision which will enable the Exchequer contribution to be increased by an amount not exceeding £2 a year for 40 years in cases where the cost of building is exceptionally high, such increase being accompanied by an equivalent increase from the county councils. Although housing progress is often, of necessity, slower in the country, I am assured that this new scheme will be gladly undertaken by the local authorities concerned and both the Rural District Councils' Association and the County Councils' Association are in full agreement with the new proposals and the financial arrangements in the Bill. I regard it as a matter of great importance that the new houses to be built, particularly in the countryside, should not only be structurally sound and suitable for the use of agricultural workers, but should be harmonious with the countryside.
The houses should be built as far as possible in or near existing villages. In many cases it is not desirable that they should be built in isolated positions, as there are great disadvantages to the tenant and his family if they are far away from the village. As far as building is concerned, I think local authorities should employ architects, and, where this is not possible, should forward their plans to the Ministry so that they may be advised and helped. The Council for the Preservation of Rural England has done much in this connection, and I know they will continue to do all they can to help. I also hope that it will be possible for suitable out-buildings to be provided and that arrangements may be possible to meet the needs of tenants for garden plots and the keeping of poultry and pigs. As soon as the Bill becomes law I propose sending a special communication to local authorities on these matters, and I have particularly in mind the provision of a special manual for their use which will contain special plans illustrating what can be done. A special sub-committee of the Central Housing Advisory Committee is advising me on this matter, and I hope to issue the manual and a circular to local authorities directly the Bill becomes law.
I observe in the Amendment on the Paper a reference to another portion of the scheme which, I think, has not been fully appreciated by hon. Members opposite. It is true, and I think it is rightly

so, that the assistance given by the Bill is not limited to the housing operations for the agricultural worker by local authorities. Provision is made in the Bill so that local authorities are able to make arrangements, subject to the conditions set out in the Clause, with other persons who may make housing provision and to pay to them the equivalent of the Exchequer contributions. Why has that been done? If hon. Members will look at the report of the Housing Advisory Committee, which includes all sections of opinion, they will find this justification, if I need one, for this proposal. They say:
In a comparatively small number of cases it may be necessary to build new houses on isolated farms for the accommodation of stockmen, etc. In view of their situation such cottages will, we anticipate, only be suitable for the accommodation of the employés of the particular farm on which they are built. Local authorities will not always be able conveniently to undertake the erection of houses in such a situation and to meet this relatively small need we suggest that a subsidy equal to the Exchequer subsidy which would be payable to the local authority should be made available to private enterprise in the form of an annual payment over a period of 40 years on condition that the rents of the cottages erected shall not exceed the rent fixed for the area by the Agricultural Wages Board for new houses.
I hope no one will dissent from the view or desire to vote against the Bill on the ground that the new subsidy will also be available to agricultural workers who wish to erect their own houses. Although the right hon. Gentleman may not know it, there are one or two areas in the country in which this provision may be of some help—the New Forest and the Forest of Dean—where there are persons who may desire to build houses for themselves with the help of the subsidy. With reference to the terms of the Motion of hon. Members opposite, I think it can be said that under all these provisions we desire to effect an improvement in the housing conditions of the rural workers, and I do not see why assistance should not be given to agricultural workers who may desire to provide houses for themselves.
My final word is in connection with the position of housing associations under the Bill. They are playing an increasing part in the national housing campaign and their numbers, I am glad to say, are increasing. Their work is not to be measured solely, or even mainly, by their housing operations. They help to keep alive public interest in housing, they


serve as a focus for voluntary effort and being less restricted than local authorities they are able to undertake pioneer work and experiments. Clause 8 enables the Exchequer to make a contribution available for housing associations with whom local authorities make arrangements for the building of houses in the same way as all the contributions for slum clearance and overcrowding under the principal Act. I think the House generally will accept the proposals as far as housing associations are concerned.
I have only one word to say about finance. I do not think anyone in surveying housing operations, all that we have done in this country, can but acknowledge the considerable financial contribution that has been made towards our housing efforts by the taxpayers. Do not let us forget them this afternoon. Since the Armistice they have contributed nearly £180,000,000 to better housing alone, and it is estimated that when the present programme for the provision of houses, for the rehousing of slum tenants and the relief of overcrowding are completed, and the houses for the general needs of the agricultural workers have been provided, the annual Exchequer contributions payable under the proposals of the Bill will amount to £2,700,000 per annum. The present commitments of the Exchequer in respect of houses provided since the War are approximately £14,500,000 per annum. Therefore, when the present programmes of housing have been completed, the contribution of the Exchequer will reach a figure of £17,250,000. A word about local authorities' finance. Housing work done by local authorities themselves or to which they have made a contribution has involved a capital expenditure of about £750,000,000, but, thanks to the generous measure of the contribution borne by the Exchequer, the 1,000,000 houses owned by local authorities are let at working-class rents at a cost to the local rates of about £4,000,000 a year—an average local rate of 3½d. in the £. The present programme will increase the average rate by only about another penny in the £.
I have this to say in conclusion. I thank the House for the generous way in which they have listened to me. I claim that this Measure is one of major importance. I think I shall have general assent when I say that it will ensure that the great contribution which undoubtedly this

generation has made to the better housing conditions of our people shall continue without interruption. Some 2,000,000 of the nation who are now living in housing conditions which we all desire to put an end to, will be able to obtain good and decent housing accommodation within the next few years. The Bill will also help to ensure a measure of planned building for some years ahead. In these proposals we have a firm programme of municipal building for the next five years. The additional number of new houses required will mean an output of 80,000 houses a year—an increase of 10,000 a year on the present output. The programme provides, moreover, an opportunity, if it is needed, for filling the gap which may be left by a falling off in the present rate of output by private enterprise, and, if the resources of the building industry permit—I emphasise that—the actual rate of progress may be accelerated substantially above the present output of 70,000 houses a year. Finally, I claim for the Bill that we shall be able by planning ahead to maintain a steady rate of output for the building industry of the country as a whole, and that the new proposals will have an appreciable effect in alleviating housing shortage in rural areas and will do much to promote the wellbeing and efficiency of our agricultural workers. For all these reasons I commend the Measure to the House.

4.58 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Greenwood: I beg to move, to leave out from the word "That," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
this House, realising the limited extent to which overcrowding can be abated under the operation o£ the Housing Act, 1935, and the need for more progressive measures, regrets that, on the contrary, a Bill has been introduced which, in so far as it becomes operative, will result in higher rents, and which substantially reduces the amount of State assistance in respect of slum clearance, abandons the sound principle of basing the subsidy upon the number of persons rehoused, and revives the objectionable policy of subsidising private enterprise in circumstances which will perpetuate the evil system of the tied cottage in rural areas.
Whenever the right hon. Gentleman has followed me in the House, full of righteous indignation, he has invariably said, "We have listened to a characteristic speech from the right hon. Gentleman." Let me hand him the same bouquet this afternoon. We have listened


to a characteristic speech from the right, hon. Gentleman. He has developed a technique which, I think, is unrivalled in this House. When the Bill or news of the Bill, was first published in the Press, the implication was that the right hon. Gentleman was embarking on a great new housing crusade. It was as if he said "Behold, the new St. George, the slayer of the dragon of bad housing." He has an art, which I am prepared to admit I do not possess, of persuading both public and Press that he is the author of all the beneficent housing legislation that this country has passed. On innumerable occasions he has even plucked the laurels of the 1930 Act from my brow—and this is part of his technique—and has remained discreetly silent on the massacre of the Housing (Rural Authorities) Act, 1931, and the mysterious death of the Act of 1933.
The explanatory and Financial Memorandum to this Bill is typical of this new technique. It carefully bides away far more than it discloses. The Financial Memorandum is easier to read than it is to understand, but when it is read by the mass of the people they will see that the Bill is really a masterpiece of evasion. It glosses over the retrograde steps which the Government propose to take in this Bill and leaves aside the worsening of housing conditions in which this Bill will, undoubtedly, result. Let us be perfectly clear at the outset. In this Bill there is nothing new in the way of ideas. This is no addition to, or development of, the housing policy of this country. It is a Money Bill, and not a very generous one at that. Here was an opportunity for the right hon. Gentleman, having raised his standard, to do something in the way of developing housing policy. I believe it was the first speech which the right hon. Gentleman made as Minister of Health in which he referred to the Act of 1935— now smothered in the Act of 1936—and it was perfectly obvious that his conscience was not very easy about the standards of overcrowding. He said:
The standard adopted, in my judgment, is a beginning. It represents the minimum amount of accommodation capable of early enforcement and I hope and believe that the standard will no doubt be improved as progress is made with our present housing efforts,"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th July, 1936; col. 2290, Vol. 314.]

After having heard from the right hon. Gentleman's own lips this afternoon what progress has been made, I am surprised that he had not the courage to raise the overcrowding standard left by his predecessor. Sir Hilton Young, now Lord Kennet. I am surprised that he had not the courage to do that in his Bill this afternoon, rather than become the lackey of the Treasury, for this Bill provided him with an opportunity which he may never have again of applying himself seriously to the solution of the housing problem of our time. All he has been prepared to do has been to mess about with the balance sheet. The Bill illustrates the attitude of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite towards the housing problem. It always has been one of the maximum of window-dressing and the minimum of real assistance to the people who need new homes. I am sorry to have to dispel the glamour and the rosy glow which the right hon. Gentleman has created in the House this afternoon, but I must bring home to the House the stark realities of the housing situation and of the action taken by the right hon. Gentleman, in all their bleakness. The right hon. Gentleman has referred to the contribution which the taxpayers have made. He ought to have said the contribution which the nation has made to the solution of one of its own problems, and that contribution is not an extravagant sum to have paid for the enormous increase which there has been in the happiness of the people who have been rehoused. I thought the right hon. Gentleman ended on a rather mean note when he boasted of what the taxpayer had done to solve this great national problem.
I want to put before the House three principles which were enunciated by the two Labour Governments in this country, for we must test this Bill by its agreement or disagreement with those principles. First, we have always held that subsidies should not go to private builders, but to local authorities, and that if in exceptional circumstances they did go to private enterprise, then there should be a commensurate social return irrespective of the profits of private enterprise. Secondly, we believe it right and indeed we established the principle in the Acts of 1925, 1930 and 1931, that there should be large scale differentiation between the richer and poorer local authorities, that


is to say, between town and country. We established the principle in the Act of 1930 of recognising that in certain congested areas the cost of land made housing prohibitive, and special grants were made to meet that case. The third principle is one which the right hon. Gentleman has now completely abandoned, the principle of making the State grant apply per person rehoused, and not per house. I do not object to the grant applying per house where you are dealing with the general problem of a shortage of houses. It is right, and we followed the practice in 1924 to make a grant per house, but a special problem like slum clearance, which is overcrowding in disgusting surroundings, needs a new human and social principle, and that is to be measured by the number of souls taken out of those circumstances. I would say that the right hon. Gentleman, instead of scrapping our principle of 1930, ought to have applied it to overcrowding. This is half of the slum problem. I still believe that that principle of the State taking an interest in the person—man, woman or child—is the right principle, and not that of paying money for the houses—but I will refer to that later.
What does this Bill do in support of those three principles? It accepts our second principle of differentiation between the richer and poorer areas. Unfortunately, it has gone back to the principle of subsidising private enterprise, by which I mean the private landlord. Thirdly, it has scrapped completely what to me was the vital principle of the grants under the 1930 Act. This is only in line with the long history of housing legislation in this country as handled by the right hon. Gentleman and his friends. In 1923, I well remember the present Prime Minister introducing his Housing Measure. It was modest in its financial arrangements—£6 a year for 20 years—but it was intended to restore private enterprise as the primary agency for building working-class houses. That Act was a ramp on the part of the private builders, who obtained public money and rushed up houses for sale to people with whom this House was not primarily concerned. That Act, except in so far as it was worked by the local authorities, made no solution of the main housing problem of this country—the housing of the working people. Then the right hon. Gentleman, having permitted the private

builder for a matter for four years to exploit the Treasury, reduced the subsidy from £6 a year to £4 a year. The Chamberlain subsidy, as it was called, began to suffer badly from malnutrition, and the poor thing died two years later.
In 1924 we established the principle that public money should not be utilised for the building of houses for people who could afford to buy houses, and the 1924 Act was concerned with the building of houses to let. It was on a scale which was very generous to the local authorities and it did yield results. When the present Prime Minister in 1927 decided to reduce his own subsidy he decided also to reduce the 1924 subsidy. That was done at the end of 1928. It is very important that the House should have this background in mind. The then Minister of Health, the present Prime Minister, decided on 1st October, 1929, that his subsidy was to come to an end and that the 1924 subsidy should be further reduced, but by the grace of God, a new Government intervened between 1928 and 1st October, 1929, and it was my privilege to introduce the Housing (Revision of Contributions) Act as one of the earliest Acts of the last Labour Government. The Prime Minister's baby died by the right hon. Gentleman's own hand, and it was not for me to try to apply artificial respiration. If the right hon. Gentleman thought that a subsidy to private builders was no good, who was I to think that it might be of service? But the Government did restore the State contribution of the Act of 1924, and I say this, that scores of thousands of houses have been built and are occupied to-day by working-class families which would not have been built if, in 1929, that subsidy had been further reduced.
In 1930 we introduced legislation with generous provisions to local authorities, and I do not apologise for it. That has remained intact until to-day. In 1931 one of the very last Acts that we placed on the Statute Book before what we regarded as our very untimely departure, was the Housing (Rural Authorities) Act, which was intended to supplement all that was being done under the Acts of 1924 and 1930. It was to provide an additional 40,000 cottages for agricultural workers. In order to speed it up, it was stated in the Act that builders' applications had to be made before 30th November, 1931. Then, again. Providence


intervened, but unfortunately not on our side this time, and the result was that that Act was allowed to die in the interests of so-called economy and fewer than 2,000 houses were built. During the last six years, the National Government has robbed 38,000 agricultural workers of decent homes.

Captain Sir Derrick Gunston: How many applications were made under the Housing (Rural Authorities) Act?

Mr. Greenwood: I cannot say what was the number of applications, because I lost my job before the applications began to come in. [Interruption.] Hon. Members do not like this story. Do they mean to tell me that when rural authorities were being offered, if their circumstances warranted it, a contribution which meant meeting the whole of the loss, I could not, in six months, have built 40,000 houses? There is no doubt that in 1931 the National Government deliberately damped down that Act. Now the right hon. Gentleman is appearing as the hero of the piece. I am not saying that he was the villain who was responsible for the fatal blow, but at least he was an accessory after the fact, and, therefore, I am bound to say that I take his enthusiasm for rural housing with a grain of salt. The 1924, 1930 and 1931 Housing Acts presented a complete housing code for this country. What is the record of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite?

Mrs. Tate: Building houses.

Mr. Greenwood: Before the hon. Lady came into the House, I proved on more occasions than I care to remember that their policy has resulted in not building houses. The National Government, having destroyed the Wheatley Act and having destroyed the 1931 Act, left a gap which had to be filled in somehow, so they introduced the 1933 Act, which provided for housing by guarantees instead of housing by grants. As every hon. Member knows, that Act was a complete fiasco. It did nothing. Therefore, somebody or other buried it
darkly in dead of night.
I will not continue the quotation, because it was not that kind of funeral. As far as I know, there were no friends at the funeral, and no eulogy of the dear departed. The Act was allowed to fade off

the Statute Book; but some of us who have a copy of it, as I have, regard it as a great memorial to Tory ineptitude in the matter of housing. But something more had to be done, so mighty minds got to work. There was that great gap to be filled, there was a problem to be solved; so some bright being invented the idea of overcrowding, a great new constructive idea. But it was all in the 1930 Act; and when the right hon. Gentleman talked about bringing the two things together, he might have risen to my level and not made me descend to his. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman was the author of that piece of legislation, but he was an accessory after the fact. There was an overcrowding survey of a very thorough kind, and the local authorities spent a great deal of money on it. We got a report on overcrowding which was worthless. It will still be possible, in the five years' crusade on which the right hon. Gentleman is embarking, for a house not to be overcrowded, but for some person or persons to have to sleep permanently in a living room. What is the good of the survey? We have no particulars of overcrowding on the basis of any decent, reasonable and civilised standard. The right hon. Gentleman has missed a great opportunity of fulfilling the hopes which he expressed in the House 18 months ago.
What a miserable grant that Act gave! It went up to £5 a year, and the right hon. Gentleman has admitted that, in his opinion, most local authorities could not even justify getting £5 a year. There is now to be rather more for flats on expensive sites, and so on. The whole thing was miserably inadequate, it was entirely discretionary, and, of course, it has been as complete a failure as the 1933 Act. How many applications had been received up to the end of July last? The right hon. Gentleman is very great on applications. Achievements are difficult; applications look better. Up to July of last year, applications had been received for fewer than 2,500 houses. I believe I am right in saying that up to the end of September last, that miserable Measure had produced about 4,500 houses. That Act is as dead as the 1933 Act. The present legislation is merely intended to exhume the corpse of the 1935 Act and to strike a blow at the 1930 Act. From what I have said, I think it will be seen that the whole history of the treatment of


housing by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite has been one of favouritism to private enterprise and meanness towards local authorities. That policy is again being repeated in this Measure.
Before dealing with the details of the Bill—and I do not pretend that I can exhaust my criticisms in the Second Reading Debate—I would like to refer to the Financial Resolution, and to put one point to the right hon. Gentleman. This matter was raised in a Private Notice Question this afternoon. This Bill is the first one in connection with which the new Standing Order with regard to Money Resolutions is being operated. The new Standing Order is designed to give the House a little more elbow room in the matter of legislation and Money Resolutions, so that a Money Resolution shall not unduly cripple the House in modifying a Bill. I have looked very carefully at the Financial Resolution, as I always look very carefully and with just an atom of suspicion at anything for which the right hon. Gentleman is responsible, although I do not make any charges against him in this matter, and I think the drafting more or less conforms with the substance of the Bill, except in respect of one paragraph. We have on the Order Paper two Amendments. I realise that the first one cannot be moved, but it was put on the Paper in order to draw attention to my point.
Under the Money Resolution, in the case of non-county boroughs and urban district councils, the subsidy may, in certain circumstances, be increased from £5 10s. to £6 10s., and in the case of rural district councils from £10 to a maximum of £12. As regards the former, the Resolution lays down explicitly the conditions contained in the Bill, whereas in the case of the latter, the Resolution merely states that the increase shall be allowed in such circumstances as are mentioned in the Bill. On the latter, therefore, the Committee on the Bill will have some latitude, within the limits of the Money Resolution, in deciding what the circumstances shall be, which is very right and proper, whereas in the case of the urban districts that will not be possible. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that, as a gesture of his good will towards the new Standing Order, the same procedure should be applied in both cases, and I hope, therefore, that he will be

good enough, since this is the first opportunity which has occurred of raising the point, to consider whether he cannot modify the Money Resolution before Thursday in order to give that latitude in the one case which has already been given in the other.
Coming now to the details of the Bill, I have already said that it contains no new principles, no new provisions, and no new standards. It seems to me to represent a determination on the right hon. Gentleman's part to pay for his Overcrowding Act by sweating the local authorities with regard to their slum clearance programme. The 1935 Act was so much of a failure that the right hon. Gentleman has had to come to the House this afternoon and support better financial terms, which he has done by increasing the amount to £5 10s., or it may be £6 10s., with an addition for flats on expensive sites. I plead guilty myself to having been responsible for additional grants for expensive sites, but I think the time has now arrived when this whole problem should be surveyed. The question of national planning of the distribution of our population should be seriously considered, and instead of building expensive flats, the money should be devoted to the decentralisation of our population. I mention that as a note for the right hon. Gentleman. He will have exhausted what he intends to do about housing when this Bill reaches the Statute Book; I have suggested new fields and pastures for him, and I hope he will think about the matter.
The grant which is to be made is obviously an increase and an improvement on the 1935 Act, but how does it stand with regard to the 1930 Act? The right hon. Gentleman made great play about building prices steadying for a fall. That seems to me to be an excellent description of the National Government. They may be steadying for a fall, but they have been staggering upwards for over a year, and who knows when, having steadied for a fall, something may happen to cause it? The right hon. Gentleman said, in reference to the grants, that nothing is permanent. Well, nothing is permanent, not even the right hon. Gentleman and his Government. It is certain that housing costs are not permanent. What does the right hon. Gentleman do? He talks about interest rates being 1½ per cent. down now as compared with what


they were in 1930, but all that he is doing is to exploit the financial situation in the interests of the Government, irrespective of the interests of the people who need the houses. If that is a great principle of finance, I am bound to say that it is one that I do not understand. I still say that rents are too high and that the people who ought to receive the advantage of the rates are not the Treasury, but the people who are in the houses, where many of them to-day are struggling to pay rents far in excess of their real means.
The right hon. Gentleman tried to convey the impression that the local authorities of this country are eager for this principle, that indeed they are enthusiastically behind it, welcoming it with open arms. That obviously is not true. London will be no better off, but probably rather worse off. The very day after the right hon. Gentleman himself lauded to the country the virtues of his Bill, the housing director of Manchester told a most woeful story to the Press as to the adverse financial effects of this Bill on Manchester. Here is another municipality. Like many others, it is in arrears with its slum clearance programme. For that I am not responsible, but the right hon. Gentleman is responsible. Like many other towns, this town will not be able to catch up with its arrears before his grant comes down, and it will be penalised. It expects that by the end of the year there will be 500 houses in its present slum-clearance programme arranged for but not completed. Then it no longer gets the £2 5s. per person; it gets the right hon. Gentleman's £5 10s.
In addition to that, it is expecting to build a further 600 houses in order to clear the very worst slums. It has 1,100 houses coming under the new arrangement, and it is a matter of arithmetic—the right hon. Gentleman can work it out—to find the difference between the 1930 grant and the 1938 grant. That local authority will lose on this transaction, on 1,100 houses, £6,325 per year for 40 years. That is the measure of the right hon. Gentleman's generosity to the local authorities, with whom he has been in such close and perfect communion in recent weeks while he has been hatching out this wretched Measure. The town that I have quoted is Bristol. I make a present of that to the right

hon. Gentleman. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about Wakefield?"] I do not suppose Wakefield will be any better off, though I have no particulars. Here are local authorities struggling with increasing burdens imposed by the State, with often enough no commensurate reward or assistance for carrying out those responsibilities demanded by public opinion, and often undertaken by them from a sense of public duty and national service. They are going to be penalised by this Bill.
Now I will take the right hon. Gentleman's estimate. I do not accept it—I think about half this country wants rebuilding—but the right hon. Gentleman is concerned, according to his Financial Resolution, with 360,000 houses, which, I take it, is his measure of the national need. The right hon. Gentleman has talked in terms of the continuity of building, but will this Bill produce during the period which he has in mind these 360,000 houses or flats? He may exploit the public pressure for more housing accommodation, he may exploit the public spirit of local authorities, but if he does, it will be at a very heavy price, both for the local authorities and the wants of the people of this country, because in the case that I have already quoted, if these 1,100 houses are to be built with the new grant, it will necessitate increased weekly rents of 2s. 3d. per week. The right hon. Gentleman never says anything unpalatable. I do not blame him; his case is a bad one. On the other hand, local authorities, with their very limited resources, may not be able with the new grants to face the housing problem, and they may not be able to face this kind of increase which we are told on the responsible authority of Bristol will mean a very substantial addition to the rents of the houses. If that be the case, then fewer houses will be built than the local authorities know they need, and the right hon. Gentleman is not going to fulfil his programme.
I have heard the right hon. Gentleman juggling about with figures too often, and I want to press this point about rents a little further. With the present grants, rents will rise, broadly speaking. They may under the arrangements in the 1936 Act be spread over all the people who will have municipal houses, but that is only spreading the burden, it is not relieving it. The one thing certain is that


in the aggregate rents will not fall. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has this fact in mind in introducing this Bill before his Measure on rent restriction. I do not want to press that point far, but it is the considered policy of the right hon. Gentleman's party to get rid of all forms of rent control so as to re-establish the freedom of the landlord to impoverish his tenants, and I can see the Rent Restriction Bill and this Housing Bill being part of a very cunning policy directed towards a general increase in the level of working-class house rents.
I do not pursue the finances of the Bill any further at this stage as there will be other opportunities. I have said that on this side we do not like the alteration of the principle with regard to the payment for persons per house. The right hon. Gentleman says he wants his latitude, and that it might mean two houses for five people or five houses for two people. Is not that wonderful? I fail to follow his reasoning. I say that under the principle of rehousing you have a greater latitude about the size of the house according to the needs of the family than you have under the right hon. Gentleman's grant, because what is going to happen is that with his average £5 10s. grant, he will get an average house, into which families of every size will have to fit.
The Minister made great play about rural housing. If his statement is a belated repentance for his friends having destroyed the 1924 Act and the 1931 Act, then I accept his apology, but I am afraid it is not enough. As the right hon. Gentleman spoke one almost felt that catch in his throat. On this side of the Table I could feel him throbbing when he spoke of the possibility of agricultural workers buying their own houses. This is not a Bill designed to enable agricultural workers to purchase their own houses.

Sir K. Wood: I said building their own houses.

Mr. Greenwood: What, with their own hands? What about local by-laws? This Bill becomes worse the more we hear about it, and if it is intended to be a blacklegging proposal on the building industry, some of my hon. Friends will want to say something about it. If, as I understood, it is a Bill to enable agricultural labourers to become possessors of

their own houses, I am prepared to argue against either of these measures being adopted in this Bill.

Sir Francis Fremantle: Against the building societies, too?

Mr. Greenwood: If the hon. Member will give me a chance, I am coming to that very important point. The whole purpose of this proposal is really to give another subsidy to the rural landlords. Its whole idea is to allow landlords to build houses, tied houses, for farm workers, so that they can get higher rents. It is obvious that this is not going to apply merely to the stockman, the man who has to live on a lonely hillside watching his flock of sheep. This is going to be used, to enable farmers, whose houses are too bad to be reconditioned under the Act of which the right hon. Gentleman is so proud, to build with State and local authority assistance. I regard this side of the Bill as very unsatisfactory, and I am not wildly enthusiastic about this idea of pigs and poultry. This idea that the new houses will include accommodation for keeping pigs and poultry is a good way of keeping the standard of wages down in existing circumstances. I can conceive that kind of thing being a social asset, but I cannot see it being much of an asset in existing circumstances.
We do not feel that this Bill is a satisfactory Measure. We believe that it is not progressive, and that it is really retrograde. We would say to the right hon. Gentleman, "Give us back the 1924 Act and the 1930 Act with all its provisions; give us back the 1931 Act for rural areas, and give us an administration of these Acts which will put the public need before the interests of the Treasury and of private enterprise and private landlords." If the right hon. Gentleman would do that we should be satisfied. We cannot be satisfied with this Bill. It betrays the local authorities and the nation, whose burdens are carried on the backs of the common people.

5.48 p.m.

Sir Percy Harris: We have heard two remarkable speeches. I do not think we could have had two speeches which contrasted so much in style. The Minister's speech was gentle in manner; he cooed like a dove as if anxious to show the House that he is reasonable. The right


hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) was eloquent; I will not say he roared like a lion, but he was obviously sincere in his enthusiasm for housing. The Minister of Health is bringing forward yet another Housing Bill. We have had a great number since the War, and if the number of Bills could solve the housing problem, it ought to have been solved many years ago. We have had the Addison Act, the Mond Act, the Wheatley Act, the Chamberlain Act, the Greenwood Act, the Hilton Young Act and the Kingsley Wood Act. They are all attempts in various ways, chopping and changing about, partly under pressure from local authorities and partly under pressure from the Treasury, to meet this problem on the principle of trial and error. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we cannot treat it as an isolated problem apart from the other economic problems that worry us, such as rent, wages, the location of industry and size of family. They all have to be taken into account if we are really to find a final solution. I think I can say without offending anybody that housing has now become the monopoly of no party. The national conscience has been roused, and, although there may be degrees of enthusiasm, there is no section of society which does not believe that we cannot have social justice until the problem is solved. I would refer in this connection to the work done by the Housing Centre. If any hon. Member is in doubt about any problem, he will find there charts, designs and statistics to his heart's content, according to his bias or line of argument.
I have always argued that overcrowding as a problem is far more urgent and important than slum clearance. Slums are more visual and, therefore, the public is more conscious of them, but, from the point of view of the family which lives in a house, overcrowding is a much more serious problem. My view is that the best contribution we can make to the housing problem is to add to the number of rooms at rents within the competence of the ordinary working-class family. The work done on slum clearance is to a certain extent a great triumph for the local authorities, but it is as well to remember that while they have been building houses they have also been pulling them down. Up to the end of last year, according to

figures I got from the right hon. Gentleman yesterday, no fewer than 151,000 houses have been pulled down, against 178,000 constructed in various ways by local authorities. That shows a balance in the number of houses of only 27,000. Do not let it be thought that I do not appreciate that effort. We have good houses instead of bad houses, but, as a contribution to overcrowding, we have to remember that while we have been building to rehouse, we have not at the same time been adding largely to the number of rooms available to the people who are the chief sufferers.
I have been reading the Debate in 1935 when the right hon. Gentleman who has been transferred to another place introduced his Measure of that year. We were promised great results. According to further figures which I was given yesterday, only 6,400 houses were completed up to the end of last year, 10,700 houses had been approved, and the Exchequer contribution was only £11,000. So that nobody can say the Act of 1935 is a great memorial to the right hon. Gentleman who inspired it and introduced it to the House. I am not surprised that the right hon. Gentleman is anxious to throw its system of finance overboard. I do not depreciate the usefulness, such as it is, of the overcrowding survey, although it has proved to be a rather costly document. It cost £250,000, which is a large sum for a statistical inquiry. The standard provided in the Act of 1935 is a low one, and I tried in Committee and on the various stages in the House to get it raised. Some 9,000,000 houses were surveyed, and on the basis of the low standard in the Act, 341,000 houses, or 3.8 per cent., were found to be overcrowded. The standard was so low that children between one and ten, irrespective of sex, were counted as half persons, and a child under one did not count at all.
The survey makes an interesting calculation on page 12, that a variation of the overcrowded standard which reduced the permitted number per dwelling by 10 per cent., would increase the number of families which would be overcrowded by about 380,000. That means that 4.4 of the present uncrowded families are very near the borderline of overcrowding. If this basis had been taken, it would have more than doubled the number of persons overcrowded. It is not unreasonable to say, therefore, that the real problem we have


to solve is to find houses, homes and rooms for something like 750,000 families. I see that the right hon. Gentleman nods assent. Even on the basis of the Act of 1935, the number of new houses required to abate overcrowding is 200,000, which represents 60 per cent. of the total number of families overcrowded.
The report of the survey points out that the abatement of overcrowding is well within the capacity of the local authorities, but they have not up to the present achieved any big result. The worst example of overcrowding is in the north of England. Sunderland stands in a class by itself. I do not know what the reason is. Over 20 per cent. of the working-class families there are overcrowded on the basis of the 1935 Act. The report also points out that the East End of London and North-East London have a bad amount of overcrowding. Shoreditch heads the list with 17 per cent.; then come Stepney with 15 per cent., and Bethnal Green just under. This is where I am going to criticise the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman. The report brings out a significant fact. The average overcrowded family is 74 per cent. larger than the average family. The accommodation that it occupies is 37 per cent. less than the average family. That is to say, it is the large families which suffer most from overcrowding and who have the least number of roms. I do not think it can be doubted that in a large number of cases the head of the large family is earning low wages.
The weakness of the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman is that he is to give his subsidy per house. It has been rightly pointed out that there will be a temptation for local authorities to build a smaller house. My experience is—I am having it constantly, almost every day, and any urban Member will tell the same story—that the problem we have to face is the applications for accommodation from men earning low wages who are either unemployed or partly employed. The local authorities are not able or not willing to meet those demands.
I want to make a constructive suggestion, because under our new financial provisions the right hon. Gentleman will have the opportunity of modifying his Financial Resolution. I suggest that instead of a subsidy per house it should be a subsidy per room. That would be a stimulus to

local authorities to cater for the most urgent problem of all, that of the wage-earner with low wages and a large family. In our recent housing legislation that problem does not seem to have been met. I have referred before—and I was glad to see that the right hon. Gentleman went out of his way to mention it—to the overemphasis laid in recent years upon the construction of flats as against cottages. I am conscious of the fact that you cannot get a quart into a pint pot, and that in central areas it is necessary to build a certain number of block dwellings, but we do not want our cities to become, as on the Continent, cities of flat dwellers. Flats are all right for old people and couples with no children, but are a poor substitute for cottages for family life. The danger with local authorities, at any rate in London, is that in their efforts to bring about uniformity in an area they are inclined to sweep away quite decent streets and pull down houses with back gardens in order to substitute five-storey block buildings.
The right hon. Gentleman is very keen on voluntary associations, and from what I know of them they are well-meaning people, most anxious to make a real contribution to the housing problem. Could not they be used to some extent, under the control of local authorities, for the reconditioning of some of these houses with back gardens in quite decent streets, which are still fairly well built, if out of date according to our modern ideas? They could pull down a house here and there, add a bathroom to a house or put in a damp course. In that way many of these streets could be preserved, much to the appreciation of the people who live in them. I see it stated in a newspaper that in South London there was an indignation meeting of some of the people living in some of these side streets at a proposal to sweep away their houses and force them into block dwellings. At any rate I am sure that as Minister of Health the right hon. Gentleman will not ignore the instinct of an English family to prefer even a very commonplace old-fashioned house to one of these modern flats in a five-storey building.
I am very glad that the right hon. Gentleman used the phrase "planned housing," but although he took pride in his Bill I do not know where he can find any Clause which justifies that reference to planned housing. It is my


criticism of most of the recent housing legislation that it does not provide for planned housing, but deals with housing in piecemeal fashion. In our large cities housing is part of the great industrial problem of location of industries, transport, provision of open spaces, etc. An hon. Member opposite has taken an active interest in the experiment of creating model villages. For some reason or other Ministers of Health in recent years have seemed to frown on the experiment of the satellite town, where we see the working out of the housing problem not as a question by itself but as a part of industrial development. There is a committee now sitting on the location of industry. All round London we see factories situated where there are no houses and houses put up in places where there is no employment, and big districts developed without adequate transport facilities. If the right hon. Gentleman wanted to make his name famous as a housing reformer he should have gone in for a much larger and bolder Measure than this, making it a real Housing Bill, attempting to link up the housing problem with the whole industrial life of the country and with town-planning as a whole.

6.7 p.m.

Mr. Clement Davies: I am sure the House has listened with gratitude to the speech of the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris). It was a speech full of thought, full of matter, full of sound argument. He said rightly that the housing question is not to-day the monopoly of any party, but the concern of all persons. I could not help feeling what a great difference there was between that speech and the speech which immediately preceded it. The right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) has a very pleasant personality, he is a very attractive man, but I think it is time that the House had from him a reasoned speech such as we are entitled to when anyone speaks from the honoured position of that Box, and not the high falutin', flaunting stuff which might do very well in certain parts of Hyde Park but which we are not entitled to get in this House from a right hon. Gentleman who has himself occupied the honourable position of Minister of Health. Among other things he said this Bill introduced no new principle, no new idea. I personally am grateful to the Minister

for introducing one new principle and one new idea, the principle that small, poor boroughs are entitled to special consideration. Hitherto, contrary to the experience of Scotland, they have been treated exactly in the same way as large industrial and wealthy boroughs.
I could wish, as the hon. Baronet has said, that the Minister had been bolder, but it may be a good thing, after all, that in this old country we cannot have all that we want, that we cannot have it all our own way, and have to proceed by degrees from one Act to another Act and, I hope, from one big improvement to another. I should have liked him to have seized this opportunity of re-defining urban areas and rural areas, because at the present moment the definition is absolutely nonsensical. The last census showed that my own county has a population of 48,473. The total population is less than the population of certain rural districts in the counties of South Wales. Within that county there are six urban districts. Four of them are towns which possess old charters and have the full panoply of a mayor, aldermen and councillors, and are treated as if they were urban authorities.
If the House will bear with me I should like to give figures concerning those six little boroughs. I do so without any hesitation because, until 1918, so curious are the anomalies which are allowed to persist in this country, those six little boroughs returned their own separate Member to this House. The largest town of all, which has not got the dignity of a mayor, is Newtown, with about 5,800 inhabitants, the next is Welshpool with 5,600, the next—a big drop—is Llanidloes with 2,350, the next Machynlleth with 1,830, the next, my own home town, Llanfyllin, with 1,440, and then comes the county town, Montgomery, with 888. They are all boroughs within a county, the population of which is less than that of many a town. It is interesting to see, also, what burden is put upon those small boroughs under the Acts which are at present in existence. A penny rate in Montgomery produces £9 a year, a penny rate in my own town produces £11, a penny rate in Machynlleth produces £27, a penny rate in Welshpool, £75. In my own town, if they pay the sanitary inspector the magnificent sum of £2 a week, it means 9d.


on the rates, and yet it is treated as an urban area.
With some very few exceptions all those little towns depend entirely upon agriculture. At one time they had flourishing markets, and a little earlier there were factories where flannel was manufactured. In two of them there are small leather factories and clothing factories, and in one, I am proud to say because it is in a rural area, there is a foundry which is still capable of competing with places in South Wales or Sheffield. The incidence of unemployment is greater in my county of Montgomery than it is in Glamorgan or Monmouth. I agree that our unemployment figures amount only to 1,000; actually, 1,280 out of an insured population—leaving out those insured as agricultural labourers under the new Act—of 4,200. Therefore, we have over 25 per cent. of our insured people unemployed, and they have been unemployed since 1919.

Mr. T. Johnston: Will the hon. and learned Member tell us what a penny rate raises in the county since derating?

Mr. Davies: I have often mentioned it in the House in connection with my application for bigger grants for education. I have mentioned it because I keep on saying that my area is a permanently distressed area. A penny rate in the whole county produces £604, less than the salaries of two teachers. Agricultural wages, which remained for so long at 31s. 6d., have recently been raised in this area to something in the neighbourhood of 34s. 6d. All wages in the area are governed by the agricultural rate. The people in these small towns and villages—I know they will hate me for describing them—have their eyes upon the agricultural wage and the comparison is with the agricultural worker. If you get a permanently employed person on the road or elsewhere, his wages are some 2s. more, but the basis for them is the agricultural wage.
Those in the small town who happen to be in employment, are, at the best, casual labourers. In my own little town—I can well see it on all occasions—they rise qutie early. There are only two streets, the main street and another street turning off it. There are one or two little side streets which do not count. The people are out and about somewhere

around seven o'clock in the morning. They stand around the old town hall from seven in the morning waiting to be called, until somebody has room for them, perhaps at about one o'clock in the afternoon. They prefer to stand round the old town hall until the night, and then they disappear. That is the state of my own town. The amazing thing is that those people have never lost their inspiration. They have as proud a record as any town in Wales, with their schools, regarding universities and positions won in the Civil Service and elsewhere by the children of people who, at best, are only casual workers.
Their houses are deplorable. It is an appalling sight to visit any of them, and they are rightly described as slums. Those little towns have done their best in difficult circumstances, individually and collectively, in pooling their information and advice. I am grateful to the Ministry for the help which it has given. At my request the six little boroughs met together, and we spent a whole day. The Ministry sent down a special inspector to hear them. I wanted him to hear their story from the people themselves. The figures which I am quoting now are known to the Ministry, but figures are dry, and you need a little imagination to get at the truth behind them. The inspector came down and listened all day to the stories which they had to tell. He advised them, and advised them well, and tried to guide them. Of course, the main trouble was "Where are we to get the money? We would like to put things right, but where are we to turn?" The inspector came back, and again I saw the Minister, who very kindly had regard again to our special conditions. I believe that what I am describing to the House now is typical of many another area, not only in Wales but in some of the hill districts in England and probably in Scotland also.
The Minister sent down at my request an inspector who remained in the county for something like six weeks or two months. I wanted him to absorb the atmosphere, to get into touch with the people and to see what they were doing and how they were living. I am emboldened to think that, as a result of his report and the further inquiries which the Minister has now made, we have how received the special concession of the extra £1—which is not much, but is something


—for these smaller urban areas, and the extra concession which has been made for the rural areas. My deep regret is that the Minister did not go further and treat the smaller urban areas as what in truth they are, rural areas. Under the Clause, which is known in the Ministry as the Montgomery Clause, if a workman in one of our small towns now desires a house, the Ministry will, I take it, regard the circumstances as special and will make a grant of £6 10s. instead of £1. There will be the grant of £1 from the county council, and the little district will have to pay £2 15s.
On the other hand, if he happens to be outside the area of the little borough, but within its rural district, the grant is different, although he may be exactly the same type of person. The grant will be £10 or probably £12, and the grants from the county council will probably be £3 instead of £1. The amount that the rural district council will have to find will be only £1 or £2 in place of £2 15s. The people concerned will get precisely the same kind of accommodation and will be earning precisely the same living, marketing in the same town and earning their livelihood in the same little market. I should like the Minister to take the bold course and say: "In future an urban area will be defined by the population and the density of population. A rural area will be defined as one which has not that density. We shall not rely upon the mere fact that they have a charter "—of which, of course, they are intensely proud. I would keep for those little towns all their past glory and I would not take a link from the chain of a solitary mayor. Let them keep their mayors, aldermen and councillors, but, in matters of public health where they cannot afford the expense, it is but right that they should be treated as rural areas.
I may not do more than mention some of the evidence to which I have recently been listening. I have now the honour to conduct, on behalf of the Minister of Health, an inquiry into the incidence of tuberculosis in Wales, and I have already spent nearly a month listening to evidence. There is such a body of evidence still forthcoming that I shall probably be another month making my inquiry. It would be wrong to refer

further to the matter or to suggest what has impressed my colleague and myself in listening to the evidence. We all realise that the position of Wales is worse comparatively than that of any other part of Great Britain, in respect of that dread and dire disease, tuberculosis. I am entitled to tell the House the kind of evidence which I have been hearing about the housing conditions in the rural areas, as they have been described to me, in Anglesey, Carnarvon and Carmarthen. Although I knew that such houses existed, it was only right that I should hear the evidence adduced by other men, chairmen of county councils, medical officers of health and officers of the authorities. There is any number of houses which are oblong built, where no sort of dampcourse was ever thought of and where the walls are, consequently, almost permanently damp. I put it to one doctor: "Can they paper it?" and he said: "Not unless they nail sacking on to the wall first of all."
The floor is in many instances beaten earth. Sometimes it is improved by having slate or stone. There is one entrance, and two windows on either side of the door. The space is divided by a partition, the original idea being that one part should be the kitchen and the living room and the other part should be the bedroom. As time went on and necessity arose because of the increase of family, boards were put across from wall to wall, and provided a sort of room in the roof where you could not possibly stand up because it tapered off and you reached the wall. For light, a hole has been knocked in the roof and the piece of glass about a foot square has been fitted in. Ventilation there is none and access to such a room has been provided in some cases by a staircase but usually by a ladder. One doctor described such places to me as tuberculosis tabernacles.
One place in particular, described to me on Friday, had horrible conditions. Under the partition between the two rooms and the kitchen was what was described as a puddle. Originally it was constructed as a well. From it the people still had water for the house. The Noble Lady who was here a moment ago was trying to impress upon the House, in an interruption, the importance of including a supply of running water. I could have assured her that the only running water


that they know in some of those old houses is the water that runs down the wall.

Mr. Charles Brown: Do they pay rent for those places?

Mr. Davies: Certainly. Usually the rent is from 1s. to 2s., and sometimes 3s. The trouble has been that although the houses have been condemned time and time again the local authorities are not in the position, do what they might, to erect new houses and to rehouse the people, and then to burn those other houses down, which is the proper way to deal with them. I have heard of effort after effort being made to try and put matters right. I would mention one other matter which shows the difficulties of local authorities and of those who try to call attention to conditions that exist. In my constituency is a village which is larger than two of the towns. I have given the House the figure of population of one town as 888 and the population of the other as 1,100; the population of this village is about 1,300. The village only has a parish council. From the year 1913 down to the year 1937, the parish council has reported twice a year to the rural district council which governs it that the housing in the village is dreadful. The district council has acknowledged the letters of the parish council, but has done nothing beyond acknowledging them. A special survey was held in that village as long ago as 1923, and on that survey 54 houses were found to be unfit for human habitation. They are still being used, and the district council is now building five houses in this bad patch. That is the position, and I feel it is only right that I should call the attention of the House to it.
I have often listened to hon. Members from distressed and semi-distressed areas, but some of the conditions I have described to the House would not be tolerated in the distressed or semi-distressed areas; there are too many people who would raise their voices and protest. But where the houses are scattered, and the people are few, they will suffer in silence and nobody knows. If people visit these places at all they will visit them in July and August, when the sun is in the heavens and the views are beautiful, but let them go in December and January when the mountain-side is bleak and the roads are deep in snow.

Then they would realise how my people are suffering. In this Bill I see some new hope for these small urban and rural areas.
I told the House that I would refer again to one little urban area, the little town of Machynlleth. That amazing little town, with its population of 1,830, was bold enough last year to undertake to provide the site for the National Eisteddfodd of Wales, and it achieved a success that was second to none. The Welsh people came there in their tens of thousands. The position of Machynlleth is this: The population I have given, namely, 1,830. A penny rate produces £27, and the rates are already 13s. 6d. in the £. The authority is still faced with having to provide 75 houses for slum clearance. That will give the House some idea of the number that there are in a small place of that kind. I suppose that the total number of houses does not exceed about 400 or 500, so that nearly a quarter of them were slum houses.
The authority is still faced with having to provide 75 houses for slum clearance, and a further 20 houses for the abatement of overcrowding, or a total of 95 houses. The total rent is about 3s. to 5s., inclusive of rates. With the average building costs, the completing of the local authority's rehousing programme will involve a rate charge of 1s. 2½d. if the rents are kept at 5s. exclusive of rates. With the extra grant of £1 from the Exchequer, and £1 per house from the county council, the rents will be 5s. exclusive of rates, and there will be no need for the local authority to contribute more than £2 15s. per house, so that for an extra penny rate they will be able to produce 10 houses and keep the rent at 5s. exclusive of rates. That, of course, is too high a figure when wages are only 31s. 6d. to 34s., but it is better than the figure we were discussing when we met down there on the last occasion, namely, 7s. 6d. or 8s. That figure will mean that the local authority, in order to complete its programme now, will have to bear a 7d. or 8d. rate—a substantial amount, but one which will be easier for them to bear than under any former Act, and for that, on behalf of my urban district and these little towns in Montgomery, I am really grateful to the Minister. I should of course have preferred to see them treated as rural authorities, when the rent would have


been about 3s. a week, which is about what the people can pay.
There is one other matter to which I should like to refer. The people who are to get the benefit of the extra grant which is to be made in rural districts where housing accommodation is required for members of the agricultural population—

Mr. George Griffiths: The hon. and learned Member has said that the rents were 5s. a week exclusive of rates, and that the rates were 13s. 6d. in the £. Can he say what is the rateable value?

Mr. Davies: I hope to be able to give the figure later, if the House will permit me to mention it again. I realise its importance. I should like the Minister to make some concession with regard to the question of the agricultural population. The definition in Section 115 (2) of the Housing Act refers to:
persons whose employment or latest employment is or was employment in agriculture or in an industry mainly dependent upon agriculture.
It includes also the dependants of such persons. That is a rather narrow definition, limited to persons who are actually engaged in agriculture or have been recently engaged in agriculture. The definition in the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, 1926, is a wider one, namely:
A person whose income is in the opinion of the local authority such that he would not ordinarily pay rent in excess of that paid by agricultural workers in the district or by an agricultural worker or employee of substantially the same economic condition.
The House will observe that in the one case the extra grant can only be made in respect of persons actually engaged in agriculture, while in the other it applies to a person engaged in work at a wage where his position is almost exactly similar economically to that of an agricultural worker. As I have said, I have people who are not actually engaged in agriculture. They are probably engaged around the market on market day, or they may be engaged on the roads, where their wages are perhaps about 2s. more than those of the agricultural worker. But I have also some who until fairly recently were engaged in lead mining, an industry which is now closed down. Their wages were low, their houses were dreadful, and the incidence of tuberculosis

among them is greater there than anywhere else. Those men are out of work; they are still living in the same hovels; they are living now on public assistance. If a house is built for one of these people who is not engaged in agricultural work, the extra grant cannot be given, but if the definition is changed to that of the earlier Act of 1926, it will be left to the Minisry to say whether such a person fulfils the conditions of that definition.
I hope the Minister will take that point into consideration before the Bill reaches its final stage. I have looked at the Money Resolution, and I think it is sufficiently widely worded that nothing need be done until a later stage of the Bill. This matter is one which will deeply concern a large number of people who are not directly engaged in agriculture but whose economic position is very similar. I have made my plea on behalf of the rural districts. Last Friday night, on my way to North Wales, I asked specially that I should go to some of the districts which are so familiar to many hon. Members opposite. I asked that I should go through Morriston, Pontardulais, and so on, on my way to the hospital which was once the home of Madame Adelina Patti. I passed along these narrow valleys, which are more like canyons, with the houses right on the roads. There are the people who had been engaged in industry, the relics of the Victorian age. It passes my comprehension how any inspiration can come to them, living there like that. They are about the third generation.
We are now losing our population. The manner in which the population of Montgomeryshire has gone down during the last 100 years is very striking. In 1841, the population of that county was 69,607, and in 1936 it was down to 45,950. One-third of the population of that rural area has left in 100 years. We were the life-blood, the source of supply of all these industrial areas. The stream will dry up unless it is made easier for the people to remain on the land. Because it gives a new hope to these rural workers and to those living in the small urban areas, I welcome the Bill.

6.43 p.m.

Mr. Hicks: I am certain that the House has been deeply moved by the picture presented to us by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. C. Davies). If ever there was a need for


activity on behalf of the poorer people in regard to housing, he has shown it to us this afternoon. Apparently, the old nobility were not too gravely concerned about housing their people, judging by the conditions which the hon. and learned Member has so vividly revealed, and which, we know, are not entirely confined to his district. They exist all over the country, and we are particularly anxious that steps should be taken to tackle this problem at the earliest possible moment.
My right hon. Friend who moved the Amendment gave a very good background of the history of housing legislation since the War and the efforts that have been made by the introduction of Bills in one form or another. He covered a fair amount of ground, and it is not my purpose to elaborate the point in great, detail. I am surrounded by friends here who live in rural towns, who have charge of housing committees, and who can show how this Bill will either help or retard them in the great work they have before them. I understand that the Measure is a compromise between the Treasury, the Ministry of Health and the local authorities. How it will work out, time alone will show; we can only state our experience of the way in which other Measures have worked out. We think that a number of the proposals will fall short of realising the desire expressed by the Minister. We are dealing with one of the greatest of social evils which has perplexed and baffled legislators for generations. There is not the slightest doubt that this is one of the greatest of our social evils. Ministers have come to it with enthusiasm and freshness and the desire to do something, and have found the problem much larger than they have been able to tackle.
I am glad the Minister has just come in, because I am going to read him a little note which I have received from the Woolwich Borough Council, and I am sure he would not like to be caught unawares when they ask him to increase the subsidy. Slumdom is an evil, difficult, obdurate and elusive, and simply appalling in its consequences on the physical and mental health of our people. Every Member here knows that slumdom exists in his own constituency. We are very anxious that it should be tackled. We are engaged now in a campaign for a healthier Britain. I think

that that will be largely superficial unless we give our people better houses and a better standard of living. Only the other day, I was reading in the old "Trades Union Congress Journal" of a resolution, moved in 1898, which began with a demand for the feeding of necessitous school-children and the raising of the school-leaving age and other things associated with education, and I thought that, if that had been listened to then, the need for urging a healthier Britain would not have arisen.
Treasury compromises may be necessary, but there can be no compromising with the slums. I was pleased to hear the Minister deal with the programme that has now been laid out, and I hope that that reveals a sort of planned activity which will take us over a number of years. We have had some very bitter post-war experience of large-scale unemployment in the building industry. Ministers have come here and made proposals, there have been clamant demands for an alteration of the subsidy, and then some new situation has arisen. Three or four times since the War, we have had big housing schemes planned, and organisations created, and they have been then closed down very substantially, if not entirely, and we have had the spectacle of 250,000 building trade workers standing outside the Employment Exchanges. I was pleased to hear that there is in this scheme the potentiality, at any rate, of new activity in building. New circumstances have arisen. The Defence programme of the country has necessarily made substantial inroads into the supply of building material and building labour. Building labour is a class of labour that requires training if you are going to get competent work. The scarcity of building material, which is due to the effect of the Defence programme, has also increased prices. I would like to quote to the Minister what the Woolwich Borough Council are saying in this matter, so that he might mend his ways in order to receive the favours of his constituents when he next appeals to them:
I am directed by the Woolwich Borough Council to state that they have had under their serious consideration the question of the recent general increase in building costs, as a result of which there will be a substantial increase in the cost of the dwellings which are now being erected and which are to be erected by the Borough Council in connection with the rehousing of occupants of clearance


areas to be dealt with by the Borough Council, and which must involve an increase in the rents of the houses to cover this additional cost. Having regard to this increase and to the fact that building costs are likely to rise still further, the Borough Council are strongly of opinion that legislation should be introduced for the purpose of increasing the Exchequer subsidies under the Housing Acts, and the Borough Council, therefore, request that you will take the matter into consideration with a view to promoting legislation as suggested.
I am sure that that will not fall on deaf ears.

Sir K. Wood: I thought it was an invitation to you to introduce the legislation

Mr. Hicks: I am sure the borough council will be glad to hear that I have consulted the Minister of Health. There has been, for a long period, a tendency to cut out this or that amenity in the building of houses. I have seen one coat of plaster put on houses instead of the minimum of two. The minimum ought to be three. I have seen many parts of the building whitewashed when they ought to have had a coat of plaster. I have seen amenities of all kinds in houses very largely diminished by this constant insistence on lowering costs, which is lowering the standard. I hope that if there is an increase in prices the Minister will have sufficient latitude to meet that situation, and that it will not be reflected by a further lowering of the standard of houses. Many of the people living in these ho uses are complaining of the poor construction and the poor amenities, and I think that the criticism is justified. The cost of the land in built-up areas is very high, landlordism having done little or nothing but sit back and levy toll on the industrious community.
I am sure that everyone agrees with the hon. and learned Gentleman who has just spoken and the hon. Baronet who spoke previously about the absence of purchasing power among the people who want to buy houses. Housing is a poverty problem. If we had no poverty, we should have no housing problem. For a large part of my own life I have had to live in very limited accommodation, because I could not afford better accommodation; but since I won the respect of my friends I have been able to do better. I am sure they could, too, if they had the opportunity. Any housing scheme that does

not reflect an appreciation of the effect of poverty will fail, and fail badly. I was pleased to hear the Minister refer to the fact that the guiding principle underlying the expenditure of money through the building industry should be the highest possible standard, consistent with economy. I am not one of those who think you can put all sorts of embellishments on a building and expect it to be produced as cheaply as if it was a plain building; nor am I stupid enough to think that many buildings which are offensive to the eye could not be better produced, and yet produced more cheaply.
Up to about 1875, when the consolidating Public Health Act was passed, the local authorities had the task of dealing only with roads and sewers. I will recite some figures later on, showing how the whole character of the work of local authorities has changed. I do not think the local authorities themselves have changed with the changing conditions. I want to make no unfair criticism on the borough engineers and the civil engineers and so on, but many local authorities would employ a sanitary inspector to design a house, or else some draftsman under the borough engineer. Not only are houses so designed offensive to the people who have to look at them, but they are very often badly planned. I see that in this Bill the Minister has the power to deal with that. I am glad that that is the case. There should be the highest possible standard, both in the structure and design of houses.
The Minister should give the most careful consideration to the possibility of setting up machinery to ensure that all local authorities and private persons take advantage of this Bill and employ the highest standard of professional action and trade facilities. Provided that they seek for these they can get them. It is marvellous how people avoid taking advantage of the facilities which are available. The Minister should bring the facilities to their notice, and then we could get the best, and not the worst, services of the building industry utilised for housing. Hitherto, housing has had the worst and the lowest developed form of services. The best have gone into other building work. As to the complaint of ugliness, which is quite justified, I regret to say that it is due to the fact that the best advice and the best craftsmanship have not been employed for housing. If


you get a good architect to plan the buildings you will attract the craftsmen. Why should you not have nicely constructed houses for the people? Why should they not be pleasant? Why should they not have relationship to the surrounding buildings, to the contour of the land and to the environment? There is nothing difficult about it. You have not to climb to the top of a mountain to discover some secret about it. It is on the table for anyone who will avail himself of such facilities as there are.
Far too little use has been made of open competition among qualified architects. Someone happens to have been appointed borough engineer to look after drains and sewers and the work is handed over to him. That is not the right way to do it. You are not getting the best out of the architectural profession unless you adopt the principle of open competition for plans and designs. Then you would get the best out of the profession and you would get the best for the country. If you take a motor ride through the country you will see the similarity of design in most of the blocks of flats—the same elevations in every town. It is a lazy acceptance of someone's conception. It might have been quite a nice thing where it was originally designed but it becomes objectionable when it is dotted about all over the country. This has been largely due to local authorities and private owners choosing from too narrow a field. It seems to me that the Ministry has a great opportunity in calling upon local authorities and private persons to use the fullest measure of architectural knowledge that is available. It could educate local authorities not to stalemate the architectural profession by confining their work to staff architects.
With regard to the rural aspect of the Bill, if it is intended to prevent further uglification of the countryside I believe it will require most careful handling. Not every architect can design a rural cottage but, when an architect has concentrated on rural practice, unquestionably he is the man to be brought in. Rural authorities have always been very parsimonious in their willingness to employ anyone from outside. The Minister should give preference to those who employ proper functionaries to design cottages in harmony with local traditions, and the local craftsman would follow the local architect. He would know the nature of the

material round about, as well as the history of the countryside, and there is no reason why we should not have pleasant and beautiful houses. Local labour would follow the architect and the builder who knows something about it would be the competent person to come in and not spoil it by building a lot of square boxes and leaving them as a permanent eyesore. There is no need for that. The Minister has a great opportunity to get local authorities to come in and help him to beautify the countryside. They ought to think out original schemes. The Bill is in essence something more than just a financial Measure. It is the nucleus of a complete reorganisation of the conception of local authorities in relation to building. They must become more architecturally-minded.
I have here the figures of loans sanctioned by the Ministry of Health from 1922–23 to 1936–37. The total for engineering works for 1936–37 was £18,533,401. That dealt with sewage disposal, refuse and scavenging, land drainage, waterworks, gas works, piers, landing stages, etc. That figure represented 23.4 per cent. of the total loans for capital purposes. On the other side £60,604,598 or 76 per cent. of the total loans for capital purposes came under the heading of public walks and pleasure gardens, baths and wash houses, hospitals, tuberculosis, maternity and child welfare and housing—£38,000,000 for housing. The problem is a very serious one, in which we are all interested. We will readily give our hand to anything that can be done to improve it. We will encourage every help that can be given. I am certain that in many of these things the demand for a firm price for a contract is not the most economical way. If you give a firm price you have to give a price which will cover all possible risks—rising cost of materials or alterations in wages—which you do not know anything about. In order to guarantee that they are not losing they take as wide a margin as possible and you are frequently fleeced. It should be approached in another way, having a minimum and a sliding scale. I beg of you not to lower standards but to encourage the use of facilities that are available for design, lay-out and execution, which would not only improve the elevation but would substantially diminish the costs.

7.10 p.m.

Mr. Turton: The hon. Member has delivered a helpful and constructive speech and I hope that at the end of the Debate we shall find him in our Lobby supporting the Bill which he described as more than a financial provision and as the nucleus of reorganisation in housing. I listened to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) trying to pump a little animosity by recalling the fate of the Labour Government's Bill. If I remember aright, that puny brat required far more than artificial respiration to get it going when the National Government came into power. It wanted some spiritual beverage poured into it, because for the 40,000 houses that he wanted there were only 2,000 applications, and the time had nearly come when it had to be weaned. I do not take it against the right hon. Gentleman that he had not the skill to devise this great Measure that my right hon. Friend has introduced.
I had hoped that this Bill would be supported by Members of all parties. I wish, however, to speak from the agricultural point of view. I am sure there is no one ony any side of the House who knows rural England, who is not worried by the depopulation of the countryside that has been going on since the War. Since 1920 no fewer than 230,000 agricultural workers have left the industry. I do not say for a moment that the only reason for the depopulation is the lack of housing facilities. I am certain that the first and chief reason must be the difference between the wages received by the agricultural and the industrial workers. But the second cause of that drift from agricultural England is the lack of housing facilities. Census figures show that two out of every five men who were working in agriculture at 25 have left it at 40. That means that, while they are content to be in agriculture when they are single, when they want to marry and settle down and have a family they have to leave it because there are not proper housing facilities for them.
Houses have diminished considerably. I know many Yorkshire villages which a hundred years ago had 20 or 30 cottages and smallholdings and which to-day have probably only two cottages and five farms. All the smallholdings have died out and the cottages have gone. It is to attract those men back and to build those houses

that I think the Bill is so important. With regard to rural housing, the triumvirate of the Socialist party—the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield and the Socialist leader of the London County Council—are attacking the Bill on the ground that it is imposing higher rents and subsidising private enterprise and tied cottages. That is very different from the attitude of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps), whom we look upon as the future dictator of the Socialist party. Only last week-end he told an audience of farmers that he himself was a failed farmer and he said we must build up the amenities of the countryside. This Bill will do it, not by imposing higher, but by lower rents.
If I wanted to build a cottage in rural England, I could not do it economically unless I charged a rent of something like 7s. 6d. a week, but the cottages that are to be built by my right hon. Friend will be let at an agricultural rent of 3s. a week, a saving of 4s. 6d. made possible by his subsidy of £10. That will be a very great achievement, and it also shows that the Socialist Amendment is quite beside the point when it accuses the Government of subsidising private enterprise. At the present time, if the agricultural labourer wants to live in a new cottage he has to pay 7s. 6d. a week, but if this Bill goes through, he will only have to pay 3s. a week. There is no advantage to private enterprise. The cottage will be of advantage only to the agricultural labourer. I can tell the Socialist party that up and down this country the agricultural labourers are welcoming a provision that will enable not only local authorities, but also bodies of private persons, to build cottages to be let at the restricted rent of 3s. per week.
I notice that the Memorandum to the Bill talks of other bodies or private persons being able to build under Clause 3. I want the Minister of Health or the Parliamentary Secretary to deal with the case of parish councils. There are in England parish councils which have cottages for pensioners and persons lately employed in agriculture. Some of these cottages have been reconditioned under the Act of 1926. In some places the parish councils want to build cottages, but they have no power to do so under the present legislation. I want to know whether, in this Bill, they will be given an opportunity


to take advantage of Clause 3 so that cottages may be built by parish councils for the use of pensioners in the agricultural industry. The parish councils are anxious for this facility and will be quite ready to carry it out, either on the advice of the district council or, as I think they would prefer, under that of the county council. The reason for the preference for the county council is—I was very glad the Minister himself stressed the point—the importance, in building these cottages, of having the services of an architect. It is an unfortunate fact that many rural district councils have not the help of an architect in the carrying out of their building programmes, whereas the county councils have the county architect. These parish councils would prefer the advantage of having the advice of the county architect, and, if that is not possible, no doubt thay would be quite content with the advice of the rural district council, and the facilities which the Minister promised from the Ministry of Health.
I hope that that point may be dealt with, and I also suggest that, in order that persons of limited means may take advantage of Clause 3, in some cases the Minister might be able to give the subsidy by way of a lump sum. The Minister talked about farm labourers building their own cottages, and the Socialist party thought that there was something funny about it. Farm labourers and smallholders are anxious to have cottages of their own, and I should have thought that the Socialist party would have had no need to be derisive because men employed in agriculture want to own the cottages in which they live. It is a perfectly proper idea, and it is most unfortunate that we had that laugh from the other side. But in order to carry on it would help these persons if they were able to obtain a lump sum. Cottages have to be paid for when built, and these men usually have not the credit at the bank to enable them to borrow easily. It would be far easier for them to have this help in the form of a lump sum. The chief reason why I wanted to speak upon this Bill is the wider question of the rating of rural houses. The proposal is to restrict the agricultural rent to 3s. a week.

Mr. A. V. Alexander: No.

Mr. Turton: We are going to restrict the rent under Clause 3 to 3s. a week. It says:
if let, is let at a rent not exceeding—
(i) the weekly rent which, by any order of the appropriate agricultural wages committee in force at the time of the letting, is determined …
I am sorry that the late First Lord of the Admiralty has not read that part of the Bill.

Mr. Alexander: I am able to follow it.

Mr. Turton: The right hon. Gentleman knows, with his wide knowledge of agriculture on the co-operative side, that the rents laid down by the agricultural wages committees vary between 2s. 6d. and 3s. 6d., and average 3s. For that reason he will find that if a subsidy is given, the rent will be regulated to 3s. a week. That is very good, but I want to know what the rates are to be. Unfortunately, if you restrict the rent to be charged, you do not also restrict the rate assessment. There was an unfortunate decision in the House of Lords in 1922, which said that if a rent is restricted under the Rent Restrictions Act, the rate assessment might be higher than the rent. Houses have been erected under Acts passed by different Governments where the rents charged are restricted, and yet they are rated very much higher. In case after case in my constituency, agricultural labourers or persons with a similar income find that, although the rent is low under the Housing Act, the rate is increased in the quinquennial re-assessment and the advantage of the low rent is taken away.
There is this one exception. Under the Local Government Act, 1929, which was passed by the Conservative Government, tied cottages are rated at only the agricultural rate. It would be unfortunate if this Bill passed without giving cottages erected under Clauses 2 and 3 the same advantages that Parliament gave to tied houses under Section 72 of the Act of 1929. If at the present time cottages are to be erected at a rent of 3s. with no provision to safeguard them with regard to rating, the rate will be a very heavy burden on the potential tenants of the houses. Although this is not strictly a rating Bill, yet we have had precedents for dealing with rating provisions in Housing Bills, and I trust that the Minister of Health will consider whether, on the Committee stage, he can put in some


provision for the limitation of the rates on cottages erected in rural England under Clauses 2 and 3 of this Bill.
The only other point I wish to raise, and it is one which has been touched upon by other hon. Members, is that of design. It is most important to have cottages of pleasing design, and wherever possible use should be made of stone. It would increase the cost, but I believe that if the Minister could give some special concession where cottages were erected in stone, it would enable the beauty of the countryside to be preserved. The beauty of the countryside of England is something which is treasured by everyone in this House, on whatever side we sit, and it would be a great disaster if this very beneficent Measure went through the House with the result that the countryside was made as ugly as it has been made by some of the housing Measures which have previously been passed by this House. I end by welcoming the Bill and saying that in my area of Yorkshire every support will be given to carry out the provisions for increasing the number of house in the countryside.

7.27 p.m.

Mr. Quibell: This has been a very interesting Debate, and I welcome the desire that has been expressed that there should be a little more variety introduced into housing in the countryside than we have hitherto enjoyed. This subject was stressed particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for East Woolwich (Mr. Hicks), but how is this to be done in practice? The policy pursued by the Ministry has always been to get the cheapest possible kind of houses. The position is limited by the restriction in the superficial feet of ground flooring, with so many superficial feet above, and the height of the rooms in some cases has been as low as 8 feet 3 inches or 8 feet 6 inches, and above something like 7 feet to the eaves. How are you to get this variety? You are certainly not going to get it out of the Minister of Health, because every time a local authority submits a price in respect of a housing scheme, it is measured by the cost in other neighbourhoods, where perhaps they have erected brick boxes with slate lids. It is measured in this way which results in the cheapest kind of houses being built. If that policy is to be pursued where can

there be variety and room for imagination and improvement?
The firm with which I am connected once undertook a contract to build houses under the Ministry. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman was Minister then, but things would not have been a bit better if he had been. Those houses were built in one of the North Wales coast towns. At the time I was, unfortunately, ill, and did not see them until the contract was nearly completed. The hon. Member for East Woolwich has described them correctly. There were the cheapest kinds of materials and furniture, a bit of plaster and whitewash, with low-ceilings; in fact, they represented the Ministry of Health at its worst. I never want to build another house of that type which the Ministry of Health insists upon local authorities building. If examples are desired, they can be found in the division of the hon. Member for the Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams). Let hon. Members go and look at some of the houses that have been built there. There are no slums on the countryside that are much worse. Some of the new houses that have been built under the Ministry of Health are quite as bad as some of the old ones that existed before. I am letting the Minister down lightly, and I warn hon. Members not to expect too much from his Department, otherwise they will be deceived.
Under the Bill it will be possible to say that so much per cubic foot is to be paid for. I should like to see an improvement in that matter. With respect to the variety of design which has been spoken about, I have seen only one local authority where they did really get variety, and I admire the houses there every time I pass them. Those houses are in Flintshire, North Wales. It passes my comprehension how that scheme passed the Ministry of Health. We have heard about the desirability of having an architect, and that he should be allowed to give his imagination free play. What room is afforded for the play of imagination when a house has to be built within the small limits of certain cubic space and at a certain height? The limitations are such that there is really no scope for imagination or colour. These ideals about variety and the use of good imagination in design are very good, and I should like to see them carried out for the benefit and the preservation of rural


England, but I do not want the House to be disappointed, because I am afraid the Minister's scheme will fall very far short of the speech that he made. So far as plans are concerned, I do not think the House need worry itself much, because if one bedroom is made a little bigger, another bedroom will have to be made less, or if a little extra space is to be given in a bathroom, one of the bedrooms will have to be reduced in size. Until the Ministry of Health alters the principle upon which it acts in these matters we shall not get much improvement.
I listened with much interest to what the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) said respecting his own county. He painted a very sorrowful picture of the housing conditions there and, if I may say so with respect, what he said is no compliment to the local authorities in that district and the persons who are connected with them. Certainly, imagination and drive are needed in the hon. and learned Member's county in regard to housing, and if he could bring to bear some of the sincerity and influence that he uses in this House, he might do much to inspire a real desire in his constituency to do something to remove the scandalous conditions which he described. I do not think that the picture he gave was overdrawn. I have had experience in his county, and I say without hesitation that in most of the rural areas they are 40 to 50 years behind the rural parts of England in regard to general housing conditions and general sanitation. That has been my experience there, and I could give the details. Some of the things that he described I have seen on large landed estates in North Wales, only a few miles from noted beauty spots.
I want to see a forward move in housing as much as any hon. Member, but I am sorry that the Minister of Health still associates himself with a Government which sabotaged the Act that would have done precisely what he now wants to do. I note that the right hon. Gentleman does not like what I am saying, but it is his own medicine, and he must have it.

Sir K. Wood: I am enjoying it.

Mr. Quibell: The Act which would have done so much good was sabotaged by his Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "Which

Act? "] The Housing (Rural Workers) Act, 1931.

Sir F. Fremantle: Oh!

Mr. Quibell: Yes, I know it gives hon. Members opposite the headache, but we intend to remind them of it during the discussions on-this Bill. It is a fact that as far as the rural districts are concerned nothing of a real character has been done for the agricultural labourer. In the hope that something will be done to give him better housing, I welcome this effort to do something for the rural district. There is, however, one feature of the Bill which I do not like. This House was responsible for passing a Measure under which a subsidy was given for rural housing, and authority was given to allow private enterprise to carry out building. The result has been that in some rural districts houses have been put up by private companies who have been more interested in the financial side of the business and in exploiting the position by erecting houses which, as the Minister well knows, are a scandal and a disgrace.
I will pay the right hon. Gentleman this compliment, that when I drew his attention to one case he promptly sent an inspector to inquire into the conditions. There was no drainage, the sewage percolated under the walls, and the water was unfit to drink. The local authority had no power to deal with the builders except to call upon them to abate the nuisance under the General Provisions of the Public Health Acts. I went to the site and I said that Parliament never intended to give a subsidy where there was no water supply, no sewage disposal and where, as the inspector saw, the overflow from the sewer was running through the air grids, under the floor of the houses. These people have gone into villages as far south as Oxford and into my own division, putting up houses, because of the provision which allowed builders other than the local authority to erect houses. There has been a lack of supervision, and the plans are infinitely worse than those for houses which the local authority have built.
I understand that neither the Ministry nor the local authority had the power to refuse to give the subsidy. The Ministry has not sufficient power to be able to say: "Unless you abate this nuisance and carry out such and such work, we will withhold the subsidy from you." I


understand that no such power exists. We had a meeting with the owners and the inspectors of the local authority, and we tried to induce them to carry out the necessary alterations, by way of a threat from the local authority. That work has not yet been completed, and people have had to live under these conditions for a considerable time. This is not a rare case. It is a pretty common experience. This company gets everything it possibly can out of the subsidy and gives as little as it can. The tenants of the houses say that the old houses from which they had come were better houses than the new ones into which they have gone. I hope, therefore, that the provision in the Bill with regard to the subsidy which states that owing to special circumstances people other than the local authority may be allowed to build, will be carefully looked into.
There is another aspect of the Bill which I do not like. There has been a general tendency on the part of all sections of the House to look upon any extension of the tied cottage system as being undesirable, and that it should be limited as far as possible, if not abolished. There has been a diminution in the number of tied cottages in recent years, and we had hoped that in this Bill the Minister would have dealt with that question so far as the agricultural labourers are concerned. We do not believe that a man can be free while he is tied to his cottage. Therefore, I look upon this side of the Bill as being a bad side, and I hope that the Minister will reconsider the question of the tied cottage before the Bill receives its Third Reading.
The financial provisions, so far as the agricultural labourer is concerned, are fairly generous, and I do not think that there is much to be complained about. The agricultural labourer will, however, complain that the £2 additional to be given by the county council will in a large measure come out of his own pocket, because agricultural and industrial concerns have been de-rated and the extra subsidy will have to come out of the county rate, which is precepted upon the rateable value of the county. There will also, I am afraid, be some objection from the urban population in regard to the subsidy. However, I hope that we may be able to secure Amendments which will improve the Bill in the way we desire. I hope the

Minister will meet us in regard to the tied cottage system, and that he will give a promise to allow more latitude in regard to the expense of the houses. A house in one district cannot necessarily be built at the same price as a house in another district. It all depends upon local circumstances, such as transport, the availability of labour, material, etc. I hope that we shall be able to secure an Amendment in that respect, that we shall be able to obtain some real variety of design, and that there will be no extension of the tied cottage system under the Bill.

7.45. p.m.

Mr. Christie: The hon. Member for Brigg (Mr. Quibell) has given us his views on the tied cottage. I am always interested in that matter because I have had to deal with it in my own area and also as a member of a committee which grants certificates. I have always noticed that when the Standing Joint Committee build new cottages for the police no one ever says that there ought not to be tied cottages for policemen, and also that wherever a railway company erects cottages for their employés in a parish there is never any complaint about the tied cottage system. It is only a tied cottage for an agricultural labourer which causes any annoyance to hon. Members opposite. As a matter of fact, the hon. Member has praised the provision in this Bill for cheap cottages for agricultural labourers; he does not seem to realize that he is giving his approval to a proposal which will very largely increase the number of tied cottages because these cottages will be available only to agricultural workers. I really believe that the serious part about tied cottages is this: it depends entirely on whether there is alternative accommodation available. The moment there is plenty of alternative accommodation the hardship of the tied cottage disappears. By this Bill my right hon. Friend is making provision to ensure that there shall be far greater alternative accommodation for agricultural workers, and therefore he is undoubtedly doing away with the tied cottage hardship.
He is doing a great deal more than that. He is doing a really fine piece of work for agriculture. Hon. Members have spoken of the advantage of keeping our young people on the land and preventing the drift to the towns. Two things have recently had some effect in


increasing this drift. First of all, the starting of the sugar beet industry, which has casualised agriculture to some extent. If a man gets only eight months' work in a year in agriculture and has to be stood oft for four months, he is very vulnerable to the suggestion that he should find work in the town, and perhaps get a bigger wage. In the second place, unemployment insurance for agricultural workers has had much the same effect. Farmers are now much more prone to stand men off in slack times and men in that position are naturally glad to accept a job on aerodrome buildings and works of that sort. Unfortunately, I am afraid that once they have gone into the towns they are very unlikely to come back. That is a most tragic thing; and the right hon. Gentleman is really doing a fine piece of work in trying to retain them on the land and giving them an inducement to come back in the way of good cottages.
There is one further point. I was chairman of the housing committee of my area for a great many years. I have always taken the greatest interest in the building of houses in the country. When the Bill came out I went to the clerk and asked him to give me some particulars as to the occupations of the people in the houses which have been built in my rural area, and also the occupations of those people who have made application for houses but have not yet been satisfied. I found that only 38 per cent. of the present tenants are engaged in agriculture, and I was surprised to hear that in spite of that very low number the average income of the whole of the tenants—over 500—was only £1 16s. 7d. That suggests that all of them were only earning an income more or less comparable with that earned by an agricultural worker. When I looked at the list of would-be tenants, I found that only one-third of them were engaged in agriculture. That means that my rural district council has not only the job of building houses, which they will be able to do under this Measure, but that it will have to leave unsatisfied a large number of people who require houses, whose income, although not obtained actually from agriculture, is exactly on the same footing as the income of an agricultural worker.
The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) suggested that if the definition of the person who

should be allowed to dwell in one of these £12 houses was the definition in the Act of 1926, people with an income comparable to that of an agricultural worker would be able to have the advantage of these cheap houses. If my right hon. Friend could see his way to come to such a decision, if, instead of deciding tenants by their professional calling he would decide them by their income or ability to pay, the problem as far as the rural population is concerned would be completely solved. If he maintains the present definition I have very great doubts as to how these other people are to get houses at a rent which they can afford to pay. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will consider this point and adopt the suggestion of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery.
We have heard a great deal of abuse of rural councils because of the ugliness of the buildings they have put up. While in certain cases this is to some extent justified, in many cases it is not justified at all. My own rural district council has always employed an architect, and he has done very well indeed for them. I must say that in the case of my district council these remarks do not apply. [An HON. MEMBER: "Yours is the exception."] No, I do not think it is the exception. In a great many parishes in East Anglia you will find very good work done. It is all very well to talk glibly about what should be done, but when you are cut down in costs, the possibility of building beautiful houses is very difficult. I think, taking it all round, except in certain areas, the result has been quite good. May I say how very much obliged I am to the Minister for what he is doing in this Bill? He is doing a fine piece of work which I am sure will be welcome in every rural parish.

7.55 p.m.

Mr. Silkin: The Debate has ranged over a very wide area, and I think it is time the House got back to the real purpose of the Bill, which is housing (financial provisions) and, after all, in the long run, the fate of slum clearance and overcrowding this country will be determined by the extent to which local authorities can be induced or encouraged to proceed with their housing activities by the financial provisions set out in the Bill. The Minister of Health in his usual amiable way is asking local authorities to swallow a large


and bitter pill which is coated with a thin layer of sugar. It is true that the Bill confers some benefits on local authorities. It would be idle to dispute that. It increases the subsidy for the relief of overcrowding, but the Minister has himself admitted that local authorities are at the present time only at the beginning of their overcrowding programme, and that very little has been done towards the abatement of overcrowding. I can tell him the reason why. Experience has shown that the present overcrowding subsidy is hopelessly inadequate. The London County Council has done a certain amount of abatement of overcrowding; and the experience of London is that the rate loss is somewhat higher than the Exchequer contribution. Under the 1935 Act it was contemplated that the Exchequer contribution would be twice as high as the rate contribution, but, in fact, taking a site which costs between £8,000 and £10,000 an acre, by no means a high cost in London, the estimated deficiency is £21 14s. 1d. per annum, of which the Exchequer contributes £10 and the rates £11 14s. 1d. In these circumstances it is not to be wondered that local authorities have so far done very little in the direction of overcrowding. All that the Bill proposes to do is to restore the proportion which it was originally intended should exist between the contribution of the Exchequer and the contribution of the local authority.
There is a further benefit in the Bill which I freely recognise, and that is that a subsidy is now being provided for the erection of cottages for the abatement of overcrowding at the rate of £5 10s. per annum for 40 years, whereas hitherto the provision of a subsidy has been entirely optional on the part of the Ministry, and certainly places like London are expressly ruled out under the provisions. But even a subsidy of £5 10s. is not adequate to meet the needs. I understand that the actual loss in connection with the Chingford Estate is about £11 per house. The contribution which the Ministry is going to make is £5 10s. and the local authority will contribute £2 15s., so that there will be a total contribution of £8 5s., whereas the actual loss will be about £11 per house. Therefore, the increased Exchequer contribution is inadequate to meet the needs of large local authorities like London. That is, of course, on the

assumption that the rents to be charged are such as will suit the pockets of those whom it is intended to rehouse.
There is a further advantage in the Bill which is that it proposes to unify the subsidy as between slum clearance and the relief of overcrowding. I admit that, administratively, it is a great convenience to local authorities to work under one subsidy instead of two. It enables them to decide, at the time when dwellings are built, for which purpose those dwellings are to be utilised. They need not appropriate dwellings in advance of completion to one purpose or the other. Having said that, I think I have exhausted the advantages of the Bill as far as local authorities are concerned.

Sir K. Wood: What does the hon. Member say is the view of the London County Council on the question of the payment of grant per house or per person?

Mr. Silkin: I do not think it matters very much to us whether the grant, in terms and in form, is given to the person or to the dwelling. What the London County Council and, I imagine, most local authorities will be interested in is the total effect of the contribution. It seems to me that the Minister has seized upon the opportunity given by this Bill to reduce substantially the subsidy on slum clearance, thereby striking a serious blow at the fine work which the local authorities have hitherto done in clearing their slums. Under the Bill the local authorities are to get a subsidy of £5 10s. a year for 40 years for cottages. Under the existing law they have been getting £2 5s. per person for 40 years and, taking five persons per dwelling, that means £11 5s. per dwelling. If the Minister insists that it should be only 4½ persons per dwelling, I do not mind, but five is the normal figure. Even at 4½ persons per dwelling, it comes to £9 12s. 6d. per dwelling. But instead of £9 12s. 6d., or, as I suggest, £11 5s. per dwelling per annum, the local authorities are now to get £5 10s.—a reduction of over £4 per dwelling for 40 years.
Take the case of flats, built on land costing £5,000 an acre, which is a moderate figure for London, though substantial for most of the other large towns. Under the Bill, the local authorities will get £13 a year. Under the existing legislation, on the same basis of five persons per dwelling, they get £17 10s., so that


they will lose £4 10s. in that respect. I submit that that is striking a serious blow at the slum clearance work which is actually in operation, the loss being far greater than any gain which will inure to local authorities under other provisions of the Bill. Moreover, at present the proportion of the Exchequer contribution to the rate contribution is something like 4½ to 1. The Minister by this Bill is reducing that proportion to 2 to 1.
Even if we take into consideration the extent of overcrowding relief operations which local authorities have to undertake, the proportion of Exchequer contributions to rate contributions works out at something like 3 to 1 which the Minister is reducing to 2 to 1. The right hon. Gentleman gave some interesting figures showing the contribution which the Exchequer has made towards housing and the amount which local authorities have contributed. If I remember aright, even that proportion works out at about 4 to 1, but in the future it will be reduced to 2 to 1. I submit that the present time, when only about half the slum clearance work has been completed, is a singularly inopportune time for a change of subsidy. The Minister proposes to swap horses while crossing the slum clearance stream and I am afraid—and I very much regret it—that he will meet with the fate of most people who attempt that kind of operation. It will be a great pity, because we might get a worse Minister of Health than the right hon. Gentleman.
What is the cause for this deduction of subsidy? The Minister has been frank with the House on that subject. The cause is based upon the reduction in rates of interest. He tells us that in 1930 the rate was 5 per cent. and that to-day it is 3½ per cent. In fact, in London and some other large places it is 3¾ per cent., but I will make the Minister a present of the quarter per cent. and assume that there is a reduction of 1½ per cent. in interest rates. That, however, is not the only factor to be considered. There is also the increased cost of building which, I submit, more than outbalances the reduction in the rate of interest. We are told that up to 1935 there was very little increase in the cost of building, but since that time there has been an increase of about 20 per cent. Figures have been submitted to the Minister, and if he works them out he will find that the increase in the cost of building, as I say, more than

outweighs the reduction in the rate of interest.
The subsidy was fixed in 1930, and under the Act of that year the Minister is required to review the subsidy at the end of three years, and thereafter at three-yearly intervals. In 1933 the then Minister of Health had the opportunity of revising the subsidy. He did not do so, and we are entitled to assume that that was because he was satisfied that there was no case then for a reduction of the subsidy. If the Minister failed to review the subsidy when there was a case for doing so, he was not doing his duty to this House. Again, in 1935 the Minister had the opportunity of reviewing the subsidy under the 1930 Act, when dealing with overcrowding, and again it must be assumed that the Minister then felt that there was no case for reducing that subsidy. I ask the Minister what change has taken place since 1935 which to-day justifies him in making this deduction. Since 1935 interest rates have actually gone up and the cost of building has gone up, but nothing has come down. Standards of building have gone up, and I personally welcome that fact. But it has gone to increase very substantially the cost of living.
The Minister has been foremost in urging, by manifesto, speech, circular and in every possible way that local authorities should improve their standards of building. These are some of the things which he has asked them to do, entirely at their own expense. None of these matters are taken into account in calculating subsidy. He has asked them to provide larger rooms; to increase the size of living rooms as the number of bedrooms increases; to provide fixed baths in separate bathrooms—that requirement has been imposed by statute upon the local authorities—and to provide private balconies for flats. Local authorities have also been urged to build with less density and to provide such amenities as community centres, children's playgrounds, and gardens as well as sheds for perambulators and cycles.
I have taken the trouble to work out the aggregate cost of these requirements, and the figure would be something like £200 per dwelling if all these things were provided in accordance with the requirements and the pressure put upon local authorities by the Minister. Some of


them have been provided. These are changes which have taken place since 1935, yet instead of increasing the subsidy—and there is a strong case for doing so—the Minister proposes substantially to reduce the subsidy on slum clearance. The Minister ought to think again about this Bill. I believe that the clearance of the slums is an object which he has at heart, but I also sincerely believe that the effect of the Bill will be, not only to retard the progress of slum clearance, but, in the case of the better-off authorities to increase rents.
A statement was made by the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) which I ought to mention, because it was pointed directly at London. The hon. Baronet attacked the policy of London in building flats. I am bound to say that in this matter I agree with the Minister, who said that the policy of the Ministry is to prefer cottages to flats wherever possible, but that there are places where cottages are impossible. In the interior of London, at any rate, it would be impossible to build cottages. We are building on land the average cost of which is about £12,000 an acre, and very often we have to pay as much as £20,000 an acre. If we were to build cottages, we should be required to build possibly 12 to the acre, although perhaps the Minister in his generosity might allow us to build a few more, but the cost for land alone would be £1,000 a dwelling. I do not think I need say more than that to indicate the impossibility of carrying out what the hon. Baronet and everybody else would wish to do in London.
Apart from the financial aspect, there is the re-housing problem. In London, there are 60 or 70 families on every acre of slum territory which is cleared. Even by the erection of five-storey flats, one can get back only about 50 families to the acre, and the council has to provide new accommodation for 10 or 20 families for every acre of slum property that is demolished. If, instead of building five-storey flats, we were to build cottages, it would be possible to get back only 12 or 15 of the 60 or 70 families displaced. The House will easily understand the impossible position in which we should be placed after a very short time of slum clearance activity if cottages were built.
I hope the right hon. Gentleman will reconsider the drastic cutting down of the subsidy for slum clearance. The reduction of the subsidy will very seriously discourage local authorities, it will cut down the amount of activity, it will seriously extend the time that will be taken in solving the problem, it will be bound to have a repercussion on the rates, and it will cause an increase in rents, and so affect the very class of persons which the various housing Measures are intended to benefit.

8.18 p.m.

Mrs. Tate: I do not intend to follow the hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Silkin) in his arguments about London, about which he knows a great deal more than I do. I confess that some of his mathematical calculations surprised me a little, but mathematics is such a weak point with me that I will leave that matter to some other hon. Members to discuss. I was, however, particularly interested in one remark made by the hon. Member He said that, speaking on behalf of the London County Council, he had no preference as to whether the subsidy was given per person displaced or per house built. I think all hon. Members on this side of the House must have been interested in that remark, as it was one of the few coherent complaints against the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) was able to make. We are accustomed to a great division of opinion among hon. Members opposite on political platforms in the country, but when they present in the House a case against a Bill, however weak it may be, they ought at least to try to make uniform complaints. It would make it easier for us to know what we are up against.
Another complaint of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield was that the Minister, in introducing the Bill, had lost a golden opportunity in that he had not brought forward a new standard in regard to overcrowding. That is a point which interests me very much. I do not think any Minister or any hon. Member has ever pretended that the present standard in regard to overcrowding is an ideal one; but it is a beginning, and it is something with which we feel we shall be able to deal in a reasonable period of time. From experience which I have


had both in urban and rural areas, I believe that we should have done irreparable damage in some respects if we had started with a higher standard. Many people at the present time feel that the decline in population is a serious problem. One of the things that might have been a very serious factor in the decline in population would have been to have started with too high a standard with regard to overcrowding. Many women both in town and country have said to me, "We would like to have more children, but if we go from our present house, there is nowhere else for us to go; if we have another child we shall, in a year's time, come within the overcrowding standard." I think that is a very serious point, and one which ought to be considered by hon. Members before they say that the time has come when we should embark on a higher standard in relation to overcrowding.
The hon. Member for Brigg (Mr. Quibell) said that hon. Members on this side of the House do not like to hear references to the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, 1931, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield, from whom I think we had a right to expect more accurate information, accused the Government of having robbed the rural population of 38,000 houses. I do not know how the right hon. Gentleman had the temerity to come to the House with that information, when it has been refuted over and over again; but as his memory is so poor, it is just as well to remind the House of what in fact did happen and of what was stated in the House as recently as January, 1935. We had it on the word of the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health that the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, 1931, was forced on the Labour party by the Liberals, and as the hon. Gentleman was a member of the Liberal party at that time, he had a right to speak and to know what the Liberal party forced on the Labour party.
What was the condition? It was that the subsidy was to be given in the case of houses for which applications were made for four months after the passing of the Act, that is to say, until November, 1931. There were only 4,000 applications. Then came the crisis; and the committee, under the chairmanship of the late Sir John Tudor Walters, which investigated the matter, said that 2,000 of

those rural cottages should be allowed, in spite of the crisis; but when the committee investigated them, they found that in order to let those houses at 3s. and 4s., it was not necessary to take a penny of subsidy under the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, 1931. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield says that the Government have prevented the building of 38,000 houses, it is a great pity that he does not investigate more carefully how many were built, for although he speaks of the murder of the Wheatley Act, he does not remind the House that every house built until June, 1934, could get the subsidy given under the Wheatley Act. I hope that that nonsensical misrepresentation will never again be made in the House.
Speaking for a rural area, I cannot be sufficiently grateful to the Minister for this Bill. I think all hon. Members really are grateful for the Bill. An interesting and constructive speech was made by the hon. Member for East Woolwich (Mr. Hicks). Housing is a problem which ought not to be a party matter. It is a problem in the solving of which the help of every person in this country is needed, if it is to be solved in the time in which all of us would like to see it solved. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health very rightly said that the shortage of houses is very largely a contributory factor to the deplorable drift of people from the country to the town, and that this Measure for building houses in the country should arrest that drift, but it will not arrest it unless we are able to build the houses where the houses are needed. Excellent as this Bill is, I think there is a danger that in some cases we shall still not be able to do that, not because of any lack of housing provisions in the Bill, but because of the conditions with regard to water in the rural areas of the country.
In my constituency, which is in Somerset, heaven knows, we have enough water falling from the skies—it is a damp county, and there should be no water shortage in out-villages—but there is a most serious water shortage, and only the other day an enterprising builder, because he knew the appalling scarcity of houses and the desperate need for them in one village, insisted on building two, only to find that he was immediately fined, because no more houses were permissible owing to the water shortage


in that area. I realise that under this Bill it is not possible to arrange for finance for water supplies, but no Bill dealing with rural housing will be able to achieve what it sets out to achieve and what the Minister and all of us wish it to achieve, until the question of water in rural villages and rural cottages has been effectively dealt with. The comparative pittance which we have so far had from the Government towards solving the water problem, has, as the Minister knows, been wholly inadequate to do more than touch the fringe of the subject.
Now, to turn to the question of cost, I should like to ask the Minister whether he has approached the building societies in this country with regard to standardisation which was recommended by the Prince of Wales in 1935 and upon the subject of which a very admirable letter from the hon. Member for Maidstone (Mr. Bossom) appeared in the "Times" in March, 1935. As all of us know, we want variety in the outside of our houses, but all houses are liable to have very much the same requirements inside, and I feel that building costs could be enormously reduced if there was a really planned system of standardisation of materials, and in the internal fitments in the houses, and I should like to know whether the Ministry has approached the building societies from that angle.
Hon. Members opposite have made a great complaint that under this Bill we are helping individuals—I think they called them the landlords—to build houses. Surely what we want is to get houses built. Hon. Members were very interested in the scarcity of houses in rural areas, and rightly so. No one will deny, I think, that the county councils already have their hands very full and that if they are helped by the individual builder and private enterprise, we shall get the number of houses we need very much more quickly than if it is left to the county councils alone. Also we hope that the county councils will build the houses in the villages, as the Minister said, but there are small farmers and in some cases agricultural workers who want houses in isolated places, and there, I should like to endorse what the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) said when he asked whether the Government would consider, in the case of the small farmer or the

agricultural labourer who has not got the capital to build a house, even with the £10 loan, of giving him the money in a lump sum. I feel that many people would build houses if they were able to have a capital grant, even if they had to pay interest on the sum which they borrowed.
We are grateful to the Minister for saying that he is anxious to see houses built more in harmony with their surroundings. All of us feel that this has unfortunately been an age in which much of beauty, particularly the beauty of rural England, has been destroyed, and I feel that pious aspirations are no longer quite enough. In the Town and Country Planning Act certainly we have a permissive Section, but I feel that when you look at many of the buildings which are spoiling the beauty of England, which, if it is once destroyed, cannot be restored again, you feel that the time has come for requiring some standard to be laid down before houses are permitted to be built. I do not think the fact of having been able to pass an examination and qualify as an architect necessarily ensures a standard of taste, and I should like to endorse what the hon. Member for East Woolwich said when he asked that houses should be put up for open competition in order that the better designs might be chosen.
There are so many other Members wishing to speak, and I am so well aware of the pain of waiting, that I do not wish to keep the House longer, but I sincerely thank the Minister for this Bill, and I feel that hon. Members opposite, if they cannot verbally appreciate it, will, those of them who are really interested in the welfare of the people of this country—and I think very many of them—appreciate it very deeply in their hearts.

8.32 p.m.

Mr. Ellis Smith: In supporting the Amendment, I desire to make particular reference to those words in which read:
the need for more progressive measures,
and also to make a few observations against the Bill, using the words, also contained in the Amendment:
which substantially reduces the amount of State assistance in respect of slum clearance.
Several hon. Members who have spoken has said that the question of housing in this country is not a party question. I want to dissociate myself from those statements, because this question is a party question.

Mrs. Tate: That is bad luck for your party, as you have built so few.

Mr. Smith: As a matter of fact, life itself to us is a party question, and, therefore, I want to remind the House of the very dark and realistic picture by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies). As he was painting that picture, he proved by the observations that he made that he was not in touch with the realities of the housing conditions in this country, because the picture that he painted of the county that he represents could equally be painted of many other areas in this country. I represent in this House an industrial area. I also live in the largest industrial area in this country. I am a product of the class that has had to live for centuries under the conditions painted by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomeryshire and I do not seek to ape anyone else. All that I seek is to do my duty in this House, to be worthy of the people among whom I was born, to be worthy of the people who have had to live under the conditions described so well by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomeryshire this evening.
Therefore, to me this Bill is a very disappointing Bill. After consulting a number of representatives of local authorities during the past year or two, and after they had reminded me of the promises and statements made by responsible Ministers during the last general election, I was looking forward to a great national housing scheme being launched by the Government. This Bill does not fulfil that requirement. Because of the letters I am constantly receiving from my constituents and from the area where I live, because of visiting the industrial areas week-end after week-end, because my wife is in touch with the working class in her district and in other districts living in similar conditions to those described by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery, I want to say that the only adequate way to deal with the housing question is to introduce a bold, courageous, national housing scheme. I heard the hon. Member for Frome (Mrs. Tate) interrupt me, and if she or any other Member doubts anything I am saying, I will give them an invitation to come with me some week-end to the districts about which I am speaking. They would see a black picture similar to that

drawn by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery.
The only way to deal with this problem is a bold attempt to wipe out the legacy we have inherited from the industrial revolution. I was hoping that the Government would introduce a Bill based upon our last 18 years' experience of housing. Since the Armistice Bill after Bill has been introduced, and one would have thought that in 1938 the Minister of Health, benefiting by our experiences of those years, would have introduced a Bill that would have been a great step forward. During the past few years, and particularly during the last few months, we have heard from Members of the House and from people outside acting in a representative capacity, much admiration for the German roads. Those German roads stand as a monument to slave labour. They were built under slave conditions, and I want to appeal to the House, and to the country through the House, that we should build in this country a monument to democracy. The best way to do that is to carry out a great national scheme of housing for our people. I want a monument to be built to democracy that will be the admiration of all progressive-minded people throughout the world. Just as so many well-placed people who are out of touch with the realities of life have seen these roads in Germany and admired them, so I want democracy in this country to force this Government to carry out a great housing scheme; and if this Government is not prepared to do it, to elect one that will represent the real aspirations of the British people in order that in our time we can build this great monument based on the needs of the people.
It was stated in the King's Speech that the Government proposed to embark upon vigorous action to provide housing accommodation in order to replace slum dwellings and to abate overcrowding. Is this Bill carrying out that promise? It is, in reality, only a finance Bill, and will not provide the houses that are required. The housing needs of the people of this country are not generally realised unless people are in touch with the local authorities or with the industrial areas. It has been admitted by the Minister in speech after speech that the basis on which the overcrowding survey was carried out was altogether too low, but, in spite of that


low basis, we find that in Sunderland the overcrowded families were 20.6 per cent., and in Newcastle 10.7 per cent. One could go on giving percentages of that kind. Is anyone satisfied with that position? Let me quote the medical officer in the area that I represent, a fine, public-spirited man. He said:
It must be stated at once that the standard laid down by the Minister of Health is a very low one, as living-rooms as well as bedrooms have to be taken into account. It is owing to this fact that only 3,539 houses were found to be legally overcrowded.
When he carried out a further inspection he found that at least 5,000 houses would be a more reasonable figure. I would draw the attention of the Minister and of the Parliamentary Secretary to the fact that this public-spirited medical officer states:
In 737 cases there are three, four, five, six, or even seven families living in one house, although these are not legally overcrowded.
Such are the conditions under which our people have to live. One can see something of these conditions by analysing the informative reports which are published by the Unemployment Assistance Board's officers. They are in constant touch with applicants for benefit, and they are able to compose reports like these. The "Times" quoted from one of these reports on 1st July, 1937, and in a leading article entitled "Hidden Needs," it made use of these words:
In the Hanley area cases have been found—the plural number deserves attention—of 32 people in a two-bedroomed house and 17 people in one room. Many houses are infested with vermin, rats and crickets.
That is why some of us cannot speak with the complacent manner of so many Members who have taken part in this Debate. If we are to be worthy of the people living in such areas, who too long have been speechless, who too long have not been represented in our national assembly, who too long have made promise after promise at general elections which Parliament after Parliament has betrayed, if the aspirations and the need of the people are to be adequately presented in this House, it will be necessary for us to speak more and more in the way in which I am attempting to speak.
If any hon. Member thinks I am exaggerating, I would remind him of the

able speech made by the Bradford Conservative chairman only 12 months ago, believe that, to a certain extent, he indulged in a slight exaggeration, but there vas a good deal of truth in what he said. The reason he felt himself forced to speak n that way was that he lives in the Bradford area itself. He does not live in the south of England, in Eastbourne or Bournemouth, or any place of that kind and go up to the North only at a general election or at the week-end to speak for the Conservative party. He lives among the people there, and he said:
When I had finished my tour of the Bradford area I felt ashamed of my country, thoroughly ashamed of the National Government and thoroughly ashamed of the Conservative party.
I am not ashamed of my country, I am not ashamed of my party, because I believe that sooner or later this party, representing the aspirations and the needs of this country, this party representing the outlook of the people of this country, will capture the confidence of the people of this country, and then we shall be able to translate our theoretical ideas into the concrete realities which will meet their needs.
Having said that, I want to pay a tribute to a certain number of housing authorities. One housing scheme for which I have a great admiration is the Wythenshawe scheme, Manchester. It is an ideal site, it is well planned, it is nicely laid out, and it has provided the people—hundreds of people whom I know—as good men and women as this country ever produced, who had lived in slum areas and overcrowded areas in Manchester, with a new environment which has inspired them to greater and better things. Its only shortcoming is that there is difficulty about transport, and this is a problem which will have to be faced both by the local authorities and the Government in connection with such housing schemes. Why cannot we have Wythenshawes in all parts of the country? Why cannot we have a Wythenshawe in order to deal with the problem of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies)? Why cannot we have a Wythenshawe for areas where the rates have gone up to 16s., 17s., 19s. and even 20s. in the £—areas like Merthyr, Stoke-on-Trent and others, where the local authorities carry on under difficulties of which outside people have no idea, and where, as a consequence of the policy pursued by the


National Government since 1931, they have had to undertake more and more responsibilities, especially financial responsibilities? They are so weighted down and strangled that they cannot do justice to the housing needs of their districts, because they are not in the advantageous position of large areas like Manchester.
In addition to that, we find that more and more people are saving and scraping in order to purchase their own houses. This is a very good thing. Many of them are little palaces, a credit to the people living in them, with beautiful gardens and nice curtains at the windows. And that reminds me of people who talk about human nature. Many and many a time I have heard hon. Members say, particularly outside this House, "Human nature won't stand for this and human nature won't stand for that." I have heard them say, "Take people out of slums in one area and put them into another area and they will immediately make slums of that area." That is not true. Anyone who knows the people of this country will know that when they are put into a new environment they quickly respond to it, and anyone who talks about human nature in the way I have indicated shows that he does not understand human nature, because human nature is the reflection of all that is best in people. Once they are in an environment which is likely to bring the best out of that human nature, the people respond to the change.
I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to make a note of this point. The greatest need is for thousands of houses to be built to be let at rents which people can afford to pay. Those who require houses more than anyone else are those who cannot afford to pay a rent of more than 10s. a week, inclusive of rates and everything else. If those people are to be adequately housed it will be necessary for the Government to take action. It is for the Government to work out how the houses can be built without a lowering of the standard of housing, because, relatively speaking, only the best is good enough for the people for whom I am speaking. We want decent houses, of a decent standard, at not more than 10s. a week. I have put question after question to the Minister of Health in order to try to stimulate interest in another matter. The Minister of Health, the right hon.

Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) and the Prime Minister, and their wives, have at different times visited different kinds of houses in the Manchester district which are the admiration of all progressive people. Some of those houses have catered for widows, others for old-age pensioners. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to make a note of this, so that he and the Minister can give consideration to the need for houses of that type to be built in other parts of the country.
Now I have an observation or two to make about the Bill itself. I hope that before it goes to Committee the Minister will be good enough to reconsider this aspect of it. Clause 10 relates to the transitional provisions and in it appear the words:
if the Minister thinks fit so to determine.
We have found by experience that that phrase creates a great deal of uncertainty. It leaves the question too much open to various interpretations by officials of the Ministry of Health. I am not speaking critically of those officials, because having been in touch with a number of them I know the kind of men they are, and how eager they are to do the right thing. A Bill phrased in that way is left open to various interpretations. Instead of the matter being left to the Minister to determine, there should be a definite time, say, April, 1938.
I want to ask one or two questions about the White Paper published by the Minister of Health in July, 1937. It shows the need for a great national housing scheme, and it shows also the wide variation in the number of houses that have been built. We find that Bristol built 12,000 houses, Leeds 11,000, Nottingham 12,000, Sheffield 18,000 and similar areas 6,000, 5,000 or as low as 4,000. There must be an explanation for that variation, and I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that such great discrepancy in the number of houses provided for the people is not fair. These matters should not be left to the local authorities, but should be the responsibility of the Government, who should say how many houses should be built to satisfy the needs of the people in any particular area. In support of these observations I find that Lord Harewood, speaking only a short time ago, said that the greatest need of this country was houses to be built to be let at 10s. a week.
America is going to tackle this question in a way which I would recommend to this country. Hon. Members who had the privilege of listening to the President of the United States when he broadcast a few weeks ago will remember the vigorous speech which he made and the determination that was shown in it. If democracy is to be worthy of the people, to hold its own and reflect and represent the aspirations of the people, something on these lines will be required. The President said he was going to embark on a housing scheme to supply the American people with 4,000,000 new homes within 12 months. Here I have, taken out of the "Manchester Guardian," a photograph of the kind of house that will be built in America. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield coined a notable phrase this afternoon when he said that the Ministry was the lackey of the Treasury. That is the key to the understanding of the problem. I remember hearing about the speeches that were made in the Committee rooms in this House in 1929, 1930 and 1931, when prominent people, who sat on our Front Bench and dominated this party to an unwarranted extent, were representing only the point of view of the Treasury.
The time has come when those of us who are born of the people and are sons of the people have to go out to the people and inform them that it is the Treasury that is holding up development in this country on various questions, and in the same way as we have embarked upon large-scale capital expenditure for rearmament purposes in this and other countries so we, as a democratic country, will insist that the Treasury policy of strangling the development of this country should be discontinued in order that development of the kind for which we are pleading should be carried out.

9.0 p.m.

Mr. Tree: We have been told by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent (Mr. E. Smith) that he was very thrilled when he listened over the radio to the President of the United States telling us what he proposed to do to provide suitable houses for the people of that country. I beg the hon. Member to remember that if he had listened to similar broadcasts over the last four years he would have heard exactly the same kind of thing. The hon.

Member has shown us pictures of what is going to be done in the United States, but in this country we can show him pictures of what we have done and of what we are doing. As Member for an agricultural constituency I would like to express thanks to the Government for the Bill that they are bringing forward to-night. I hope that it will give a much needed impetus to the re-housing of the rural population of this country. Many speakers in the course of the Debate have said how much has been done for the housing of the urban population as compared with the rural. I hope that this Bill will make it possible for the rural population to come abreast of what has been done in other directions. We all welcome the extension of the subsidy once more been given to private individuals. I agree with much of the speech made by the hon. Member for East Woolwich (Mr. Hicks) although I do not agree with his point that landlords are indifferent, or words to that effect, to the housing on their estates. Landlords obviously want the best possible housing they can get, if for no other reason than that they want to keep the agricultural labourer on the land.
In his opening speech, the Minister talked about the great drift away from the land. We who represent agricultural constituencies and live on the land know how serious that is. In many parts of England, at harvesting and haymaking time, you cannot get sufficient labour. From another point of view if the Food Defences of this country are to be fully maintained this is of vital importance, and the Government should regard the matter with great anxiety. Several reasons have been given for the drift away from the land. Some people attribute it to lower wages and others to the lack of amenities in the way of amusements, but we come back always to housing as the main contributory cause. You cannot expect young people starting off in life and hoping to bring up families to settle down in the kind of cottage which has been so aptly described by many hon. Members, where there are no damp courses or proper ventilation, and, above all, water supplies are scarce or at a considerable distance from the cottage. If we expect people to settle on the land we must supply them with the housing amenities they would get if they lived near a big town.
That is particularly the case with regard to water and water supplies, to which I personally attach great importance, not only in the building of new cottages, but in the reconditioning of old ones. I understand that the Ministry require, wherever it is possible, that in every new cottage there shall be a water supply and a bathroom, and I think that that is quite right. But this means that in the very near future water schemes will have to be produced in a great many parts of England, including many villages where at present there are no such schemes. I understand that in some counties the schemes that are brought up are very quickly passed, and that very often the county councils and the rural district councils share the cost. In the case, however, of poorer counties, there are often considerable delays in getting such schemes passed.
I have had some experience of a particular case. In a hamlet on my own estate, in which there were over 20 houses scheduled for improvement, there was a very good water supply, and I advised the rural district council that, if they would supply me with a ram and a reservoir, I would put a water supply and a bathroom into every house that I was reconditioning. The rural district council turned down that proposal on grounds of economy, and there is no doubt that it would have been a great burden on the rates. This water problem is one which will have to be faced all over the country in the near future, and I would ask the Government whether it would not consider a further extension of the grant, made some two or three years ago, of £1,000,000 towards water schemes. That £1,000,000, I am told, yielded schemes to the amount of £7,000,000, and I believe that a further grant from the Government would have the effect, particularly in the poorer districts, of hurrying up and making possible the passing of a great many schemes which otherwise will take a long time to get through.
There is another point that I would ask the Minister to consider. In the minds of a great many local authorities at the present time there seems to be considerable confusion as to how grants can be obtained. I wish the Ministry would, in as simple and clear language as possible, get out a pamphlet very much on the lines of that in which they have described

the possibilities of grants under the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, and would send that pamphlet to every rural district in the country. I think it would help very greatly. I will now turn to the question of amenities. We are all grateful to the Minister for the encouragement he gave to those who are working for the improvement of rural England. I think that those sentiments are shared by an ever-growing body of public opinion in this country. It has taken a long time to arouse them, but I believe they have been aroused now. Within a comparatively short time we have seen London torn so much to pieces that it has lost all its old individuality, and to-day is just another great capital city. We have seen the suburbs of every city and town in England wantonly destroyed, and we have seen large areas of the country spoilt for ever. I think to-day there is a universal cry, as much from the townspeople as from the countryman, "Let us keep beautiful what is left, and, if building on a big scale is to be undertaken, let us see that proper sites are chosen and that that building shall be of good design." I believe, further, that if this opportunity is missed in connection with the very great amount of building that is to come about under this Bill, the damage will be irreparable. The difficulty in the past has been to arouse local authorities, and, naturally, they have been very largely guided by the question of expense; but by Section 142 of the Housing Act, 1936, the Minister was given full powers. That Section reads as follows:
A local authority in preparing any proposals for the provision of houses, or in taking any action under this Act, shall have regard to the beauty of the landscape or countryside and the other amenities of the locality, and the desirability of preserving existing works of architectural, historic or artistic interest, and shall comply with such directions, if any, in that behalf as may be given to them by the Minister.
It is necessary for the Minister now to use these full powers. This entails more supervision than at present exists. A few years ago, panels were set up, on a voluntary basis, of architects who would give their time and advice to those district councils who were willing to come to them for such advice. In certain parts of England they have done magnificent work. I am told that in about a third of the country it has been most effective, but that in another third, although these panels have been set up, they have done


very little, while in the remaining third they have been entirely inoperative. That, surely, is not good enough, and, moreover, work of this importance ought not to be left to a voluntary body. I suggest, therefore, that under this Bill a qualified architect should be employed in each district by the local authority to give advice in the preparation of all schemes, and that the Minister should satisfy himself, before granting the subsidy, that a qualified architect has been so employed. The duties of that architect would include planning in collaboration with the town planning authorities, and dealing with all questions of siting and placing houses, which, in my opinion, is every bit as important as the design itself, with which also he would deal; and he would also help with reconditioning where that would be necessary under the Housing (Rural Workers) Act. It would, of course, be difficult in the poorer districts to employ an architect for each district, but in those cases a number of districts could come together jointly and employ an architect.
I quite realise that the success of this proposal would depend entirely upon the architect who was so chosen, but it would make it possible to exercise a measure of control over local authorities that is at present missing. The Ministry of Health would then be able to keep in touch with these architects, and help them, by supplying plans of buildings. I would also ask the Minister to consider making the existing by-laws more flexible, so that good design may be accomplished more easily than under the present hard-and-fast rules. There is just one further question I would ask of the Minister. I would like to know whether it is intended to include, in any scheme for building rural houses, provision for cottages in rural areas for old-age pensioners and old women who want smaller accommodation than the houses it is proposed to build? In conclusion, I would say that all of us on this side of the House welcome this Bill. We feel that it is a very great advance, and that it is going to bring up the rural housing of the country to the same level as the housing in our cities, which has no parallel in any other country to-day.

9.18 p.m.

Mr. Richards: I think that, as this Debate has continued, the complacency

with which the House listened to the introductory speech of the Minister has given way to despair. It is well that speeches like those delivered by the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. E. Smith) and the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) should occasionally recall us to the human aspect of this difficult problem. The fact remains that here we have a most difficult moral and physical problem facing us still. I do not propose to go into the analysis that has been made by successive speakers of the finances of the Bill, but I would refer to the rural aspect of the Bill. We all know the seriousness of the slum problem of the big cities. We feel that an attack has been made, at any rate, to clear away that blot. But I am not sure that something will not be done by this Bill to set back that laudable campaign. It would be very regrettable, indeed, if that were done. I hope the Minister will reconsider the grant that he proposes, and will do nothing to retard the very admirable progress that has been made in so many places.
We are all agreed that nothing adequate has yet been done for the countryside. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery did not exaggerate; he could have painted the situation in somewhat blacker tones. I am always puzzled that no account is ever taken in these Debates of the shocking conditions of so many farmhouses. We deal, quite rightly, with the housing of the agricultural labourers and the working classes, but I believe conditions in some of the farmhouses are much worse even than in some of the labourers' cottages, and I hope the day is not far distant when a review of the conditions of the farming community of the country will be made. It is proposed in the Bill that the grant should be extended to rural district councils, in order that the housing conditions of the rural workers might be brought up to something like the conditions on some of the new housing estates in urban areas. I am rather sceptical as to the possibilities of rural district councils doing this work adequately. I have some experience of rural district council work, and I do not want to be critical of the councils; but most of them are extraordinarily poor. They have not the organisation, and they have not the officials who would be necessary. We have heard about an architect being employed. I am in favour of that; but these councils


cannot afford to pay anything like a decent wage to an ordinary sanitary inspector, and the sanitary inspection is in many cases thoroughly inadequate. Now you are going to impose on them the responsibility for building houses, in regard to which most of them have no experience.
It will be far better for this work to be delegated in most places to the county councils. They have adequate staffs, they are accustomed to this kind of work, and I think they would do it admirably. There is one aspect of the matter which interests me, though I do not know that it attracts any attention in the House, and that is the difficulty of housing the agricultural labourer. It is not merely a question of urbanising the countryside. That is happening under present conditions, and I do not know that any great harm has been done hitherto. It is quite natural for towns to extend their boundaries, and build the same type of houses as they are building within those boundaries already. If the country is to be covered over with houses of that kind, however, one of the most beautiful features of the English, Welsh and Scottish countryside may be destroyed in a generation.
The housing of the agricultural labourer is not a question merely of putting up these urban types of houses in the villages. It is in a great many cases a question of restoring the kind of house in which the agricultural labourer formerly lived. He lived not in the village in a great many cases—I am speaking of my own country chiefly. He lived, perhaps, remote from the village but quite near his work, and he was a part of the countryside. In Montgomery there are hundreds of houses which were formerly smallholdings, small in the sense of being 2, 5, 10, 12, 15 acres, and they are admirably suited for the life of the countryside and, before we talk of rehousing the agricultural labourer, we ought to review the position and get parish and rural district councils to reconsider re-establishing these holdings. I am certain that this is the one reason why the agricultural labourer has left the countryside. The house has been allowed to become derelict. The smallholding has been attached to a big farm. That is the usual policy of the landlord. Here is an opportunity for the State to step in and check the tide towards the towns,

and it would be doing a great service to the countryside if we could re-establish these houses. There is no reason why we should not retain the characteristics of the various districts. A remarkable thing about this country is that the houses, the old houses particularly, are entirely different in character. That is a thing that I should very much like to see not only retained but extended. I am sure modern architecture could build beautiful houses in the countryside in suitable places, where the labourer would love to work and to live once again, and these houses would be a joy to look at, as well as a great acquisition for the nation and for the people who have to live in them.

9.28 p.m.

Major Rayner: I, too, should like to speak about the rural side of the Bill, which is divided quite naturally into two aspects, one of which might be called accommodation and the other preservation. It has been said that the countryman is beginning to ask for a higher standard of living, that he gets about and sees men no more worthy than himself in the towns given good houses, and he requires the same kind of treatment. His womenfolk require it even more. The standard of housing that they are asking for is gradually becoming that of the council house, and I have even heard of a case where a young girl has refused to marry her young man until a council house was available. This is all to the good because the countryside has lagged far too long behind the rest of the country as regards the standard of living. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Taunton (Lieut.-Colonel Wickham) the other day coined a very good phrase, that every housewife has the right to be house-proud. I cannot imagine any woman being house-proud in some of the hovels that still do duty as agricultural dwellings. I think this Bill is going to lead to some thousands of women becoming house-proud for the first time in their lives, and I must add my congratulations to those which the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary have received. It is no easy job, I imagine, for the Minister of Health. He is obliged to have a sort of two-way mind, half of it urban and half rural. It is no usual possession, but in this case it has enabled him to give birth to a good Bill.
As regards preservation, I feel that this is very important. I represent one of the most beautiful constituencies in the country and I feel that, unless the present destructive tendencies are stopped, the beauty of England will become a memory kept alive only by the art of the painter and the photographer. We do not possess majestic mountains or rivers. We cannot boast of great cataracts or dense forests. We are built on a small scale and our beauty is all our own and is of a particularly English type. It consists largely in our hedges, our hamlets, our pleasant lanes and our quiet cottages. Rivers of concrete are eating up our fields, islands are bestriding our valleys, and gradually more and more of our typical English cottages are being pulled down and replaced by an ugly rash of bricks and mortar. Although some of these cottages are hovels and must be pulled down, we ought to go more slowly than we are doing. There is no doubt that the cheapest thing is to recondition the cottages if it is possible. The county surveyor of Devonshire told me the other day that in his opinion—he is an authority on rural housing—there are very few cottages which cannot be reconditioned.
I am sure the Minister realises that local authorities are very ready to meet him more than half way as regards pulling down and building. Armed by Acts of Parliament and encouraged by the Minister, they go ahead with their pulling down and building, perhaps with more enthusiasm than caution. Some local authorities have been very successful in persuading owners to recondition. Others have been just the reverse. I hope the Minister will make quite clear his wishes on the subject. Local authorities are able, under the 1926 Act, to take over cottages which the owners are not able or do not wish to recondition, and to recondition them themselves, and one feels that this power could be used more than it is.
As has been mentioned in this Debate, there has been a tendency on the part of some local authorities to refuse grants to owners who, they consider, are wealthy enough to do the reconditioning themselves. That is not in the spirit of the Act of 1926 or of this Bill. There is not much money in cottage property at the best of times, and I hope that this point also will be driven home to the

local authorities. Another point is that the standard of fitness of cottages might be made more elastic. There is a tendency to apply a town standard to rural cottages, and the conditions are so often entirely different. Medical officers of health, with the very best will in the world, are also inclined to be too drastic and ruthless in their condemnation. It seems absurd to condemn as unfit for human habitation a cottage in which successive generations have lived to a ripe old age. I cannot help thinking that if water could be laid on, low ceilings would not matter a great deal. [An HON. MEMBER: "Would you like to live in one?"] I have lived in a house with a ceiling six feet high, perfectly happily as long as I was careful when I moved about. I feel that the composition of walls does not matter a great deal when they are thick, dry and comfortable.

Mr. Kirkwood: You get about £20 a week and the others get 20s.

Major Rayner: We have heard a good deal in this Debate about new houses. I am sure that the Minister will have noticed the remarks of various hon. Members with regard to watching the question of aesthetic values. Even in Devonshire I can think of five glorious views completely ruined by groups of cottages which stand out like carbuncles from the surrounding fields. The question of architects is important, and rural authorities, if they are to get the grants which are suggested, should be required to do more than employ a local builder or the sanitary inspector to design their cottages. I suggest that the Ministry itself is not guilty. I have taken steps to trace the ante-natal history of some of the ordinary examples of our cottages in Devonshire, and I have traced the responsibility to the Ministry of blue pencil. Ministry officials must realise that cottages in the same area do not necessarily cost the same price. Square, box-like cottages which may be perfectly suitable, if properly built for the semi-urban areas round a town like Newton Abbot, would be the absolute ruination of villages like Buckland, Lustleigh or Manaton if they were erected there.
The Ministry should realise that the yardstick has to be sympathetically applied to tenders and plans when they are put up by local authorities who suggest that beauty and stability of design


are important factors. There might be a little mor elasticity as regards clearance and demolition orders. When the appeal period has elapsed they cannot be rescinded as the rule is at present, and there is no doubt that many owners are very slack in getting to work when conditions change. I actually know of several cases where very pleasant cottages would have been saved if the order could have been rescinded. Some organisation for listing and advertising cottages which the-owners were not prepared or able to re-condition might be a very good thing. The weekender is a much abused man, but as long as he does not occupy accommodation which really belongs to the rural worker he is an asset to the countryside. I am certain that there are many townsmen who are prepared to spend generously upon some of our cottages if they are able to pick them up for a mere song. Somebody might start an organisation of that sort and it might prove to be a very good thing. I am delighted that the Minister has assured us that the Act of 1926 is to be continued because it has had very good results and is likely to have more.
I apologise to the House for keeping it rather longer than the ordinary 10 minutes, but the countryside is in the melting-pot and it is necessary for even the most unassuming back bencher of back benchers to say what he thinks about the question of preserving our beauty spots. It is up to us not only to house our rural workers as well as we can, but also to do something really practical and definite to preserve these fast-disappearing beauties about which we are all, when it comes to the point, really so keen.

9.43 p.m.

Mr. Boulton: I rise for only a very few minutes, but it is not to criticise the Bill, for it fulfils a promise given by the Government and also provides a generous contribution for an essential social service, which should not displease the local authorities. We have heard a good many speeches to-day with regard to the rural side of the Bill, but I want to refer to the industrial side, in which I am interested. Parliament is granting large sums of money to the local authorities, and in the words of the Explanatory Memorandum in paragraph (2):

Sections 105 to 108 of the Housing Act, 1936, provide for the payment of Exchequer contributions towards the provision of new housing accommodation for persons displaced from unfit houses, etc., or in connection with the abatement of overcrowding, including displacements occurring in accordance with a redevelopment plan.
Is my right hon. Friend quite satisfied that all local authorities are carrying out their obligations under the Act in return for the large grants that they are receiving, and as Parliament intended? I for one am not satisfied, and I want to draw attention to two cases of persons who are affected under the Slum Clearance Act. The first one is with regard to houses for old couples and single persons. I am not satisfied, from all the information that I have been able to obtain, that sufficient attention has been or is being paid to the building of houses for single people and old couples.
The Sheffield Corporation, I suppose, is one of the foremost cities in this country in making great headway with the clearing away of slums, with which I am wholeheartedly in agreement, and which, I am sure, must have gladdened the heart of my right hon. Friend. That is only one side of the picture. The other side is what I might term the seamy side regarding the treatment of some of those who have been affected. I suppose I should not be permitted to go into that matter on this Bill, but I profoundly disapprove of those methods. The Sheffield Corporation have, I understand, built, or are in course of building, some 25,000 houses to rehouse slum dwellers. I believe that 18,000 houses have been built, but it is only recently that plans have been approved, as far as I know, for the erection of some 304 houses for old couples, of which 52 have been completed, to be let at a rental of 5s. 11d. a week—a high enough rental for an old couple drawing, say, £1 week; but a large number of people, including widows and single people, are waiting for these houses, and some of whom have been compelled to take larger houses than they can possibly afford, thus being deprived of the means of obtaining some of the essential necessities of life: a position which, I am sure, cannot have the approval of my right hon. Friend.
The second case is that of the small shopkeeper who has been deprived of his living owing to slum clearance. This is not the first time that I have pleaded in


this House for the small shopkeeper, and I make no apology for again raising this question. Is my right hon. Friend aware that it is the policy adopted by some local authorities not to build shops either to sell or to let, on the large estates where the slum dwellers have been removed. The shopkeeper is compelled to build a shop himself, as a leaseholder, at a cost of £1,000, which is a prohibitive sum except for the negligible few. It is true that compensation is paid for disturbance, but from my information and from my own experience the sum that is paid works out at something like £30. What is the use of that to a man whose livelihood has been taken away from him and who has lost the capital that he originally put into his business? Many of these people are now on relief and they are not the only class of people who have been similarly affected. The consequence is that the trade on these great new estates, these great townships that have been built up, has fallen into the hands of the co-operative societies and the multiple shops, who can afford to comply with the onerous conditions that are laid down.
Is that what Parliament intended? Did Parliament intend by such action to subsidise co-operative societies and multiple shops, for that is really what it means? It was surely never intended, and I ask my right hon. Friend whether he cannot do something to remedy this most unsatisfactory state of affairs. Cannot he stipulate in this Bill that a certain percentage of the grant given shall be used for building more houses for old couples and single persons, and for the building of shops at reasonable rentals to be let to the smaller shopkeepers who have been removed owing to slum clearance? If that cannot be done, will he consider some other method between now and Report? There has been no greater supporter than myself of slum clearance, and I know and appreciate some of the many difficulties and weaknesses that have shown themselves and have been inherited by my right hon. Friend under the Act. But that is no reason why Parliament should not remedy these faults, in justice to a body of people who have been good citizens and ratepayers for many years.
I can assure my right hon. Friend that there is a deep feeling amongst a large number of people who are not personally affected but who see that the intention

of Parliament is not being carried out and Parliament is blamed. I know my right hon. Friend's sympathetic attitude and his desire to remove any suspicion of injustice and I would ask him whether he will not consider even now doing something to remove a real feeling of injustice by letting those who are responsible for administering this Act clearly understand what the intentions of Parliament were when this Act was passed.

9.52 p.m.

Mr. Herbert Morrison: The hon. Member for Frome (Mrs. Tate) expressed the hope that the House would treat this Bill and, indeed, the housing question generally, as a non-party question. I agree that the housing problem in itself need not of its nature be related to party politics and party controversies. Nevertheless, there is a division of principle and a division of intensity of belief between hon. Members on this side of the House and hon. Members on the other side as to the relationship between public authority and the housing needs of the people. We cannot forget that it was a very long job for us to persuade the Conservative party to accept the principle of the public provision of housing accommodation for the people.

Sir F. Fremantle: We started before the Labour party got into this House.

Mr. Morrison: If the hon. Member cannot recollect the history of the nineteenth century in this respect, it is unfortunate. Perhaps he has not read it.

Sir F. Fremantle: I read about it before the right hon. Gentleman started.

Mr. Morrison: It is a historical fact that the Conservative party took a good deal of persuading to accept the principle that a public authority had a responsibility for housing. That is not only true in Parliament, but it is true of many local authorities also. Even when legislation was passed a large proportion of Conservative local authorities failed to administer it, and, indeed, a considerable proportion of Conservative local authorities are not properly administering housing legislation right up to this date. Therefore, there is bound to be controversy between the Opposition and hon. Members on the Government benches in regard to this matter. I should be happy if there were intensity of enthusiasm and


determination on the part of the Conservative party to give to every British family good and healthy housing conditions within a reasonable time. If I and my hon. Friends could rely upon that, nobody would be more happy than we to lift the whole thing out of party controversy. Frankly, our experience of the past does not entitle us to believe that that will be the case. We feel not only that controversy on the subject is legitimate, but that there must be criticism of the Government, a gingering up of the Government by hon. Members on this side if we are to get them to do what they ought to do.
The hon. Lady told us that we ought to thank the Minister for the Bill as a material advance in the assault upon our housing problems. Honestly, looking at the Bill as a whole and with every desire to be polite and thankful, and looking at the Bill which is supposed to deal with housing problems, and which newspaper comment encouraged us to believe was a Bill which would make a real move forward, I cannot see what we have to be thankful for. On the contrary, I think we have a great deal to grumble about, and a great deal of reason to regard this not as a forward measure but as a backward measure in housing. I believe that in many respects it is meant to be a backward measure. We cannot lift this out of party controversy, and we cannot thank the right hon. Gentleman for his Bill. If there were something to be thankful for, taking the Bill as a whole, the right hon. Gentleman knows that I would thank him for it with great enthusiasm, but clearly there is not, and there is a great deal about which we must be critical.
I often wonder, when we are discussing Housing Bills and housing problems, whether the House as a whole and Ministers are conscious of the magnitude of the problem. I go about the country a good deal and I see, as hon. Members also see, towns, suburbs, and mining areas, and what appals me is that the great majority of working-class houses in this country ought to be pulled down, whole towns ought to be demolished Take the Potteries, not necessarily the worst of places. There are some good spots in the Potteries. I remember one dismal, dreary Sunday morning I spent walking about some of the areas in the Potteries and thinking

that they were a disgrace to civilisation. It was not a case of individual streets but of whole areas which ought to be blown up, cleared and redeveloped nearer to a proper standard of public amenities. We have been really messing with the problem, taking the country as a whole when we ought to have been handling it in a large imaginative way, taking a really big sweep not for the purpose of making individual improvements here and there, but wiping out whole streets and making up our minds that within a reasonable period of years every slum in the country shall go and every bit of overcrowding. No Conservative Minister of Health has yet handled the problem in that spirit, and no Conservative local authority has yet handled the problem in that spirit. We are really drifting, patching up, playing with the problem. What we want is a big, comprehensive, energetic drive until the problem is solved and decency brought into the houses of the masses of our people.

Mr. Selley: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House why he told London that he was able, with the present administration and the present Housing Acts, to clear the slums of London in a few years? Why is he contradicting that statement now?

Mr. Morrison: I am not. Is the hon. Member for South Battersea (Mr. Selley) going to hand to the Minister of Health the credit for what the hon. Member for Peckham (Mr. Silkin) is doing on the London County Council? He does not need to hand the right hon. Gentleman the credit, because the right hon. Gentleman will take it without the hon. Member giving it. We said that we would clear away the slums of London in a limited number of years, and we adhere to that, but as soon as we made a start on the task, and really made a beginning in the matter of slum clearance, for which the Treasury has to pay its proportion, the Minister cuts the grant down. The right hon. Gentleman is a London Member; he is the chairman of a committee which is supposed to be saving London for the Conservative party. If you cut the slum clearance proportion down from 4½ to 1 to 2 to 1, the right hon. Gentleman will know at the next election that I have a first-class grievance about which he will hear in West Woolwich. We made a promise and as far as


we are concerned we shall not break it, but the hon. Member for South Battersea and the Minister of Health are voting for a Measure to-night which will penalise the ratepayers of London and make our task more difficult than it otherwise would be.
The truth is that since the Wax on the part of local authorities governed by the hon. Members opposite and on the part of the Government there has not been a continuous and steady activity for housing reform. It has been vacillation all the time; stops and starts, a push forward, then an economy campaign; a push forward again, and then a reduction in the State grant; another push forward, and now to-day another reduction in the State grant. This is not unconnected with the private Member's Motion which was before the House last week. I believe that we are at the beginning of an assault on the social services by the Conservative party. [Interruption.] Did not the Prime Minister himself give an indication of it? Did he not say that you cannot have armaments and social services as well? It is just another way of repeating Field-Marshal Goering's observation, "Guns before butter." There was the Motion last week, and now we have this Bill the purpose of which, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, is to save money for the Treasury at the expense of local authorities.
This is not a Bill to provide houses. It is a Bill to save money for the Treasury. The right hon. Gentleman has got his orders to save money at the expense of the local authorities, at the expense of the people who live in the houses, or at the expense of not getting the job done. The truth is that the Labour local authorities have been doing too much. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, it was all right to have these big grants when the hon. Member for South Battersea was in charge at the London County Council, but it is a different matter when my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham is in charge. The Treasury say, "These local authorities are taking the Minister of Health seriously, and these grants must be, cut down" Thus the process of slum clearance, as far as the Treasury is concerned, is, to be; slowed down in order to save money. Hon. Members opposite

have spoken of the Bill as if it were a Bill for building houses and clearing slums. I assure them that, on the contrary, it is a Bill to stop those things or slow them down, for the purpose of saving money in pursuance of the Prime Minister's declaration of some months ago, that you cannot have armaments and social reform as well, and also in pursuance of the demand which was made recently in the Private Member's Motion to which I have referred.
We have had vacillation after vacillation on this question since the conclusion of the War. This is the latest piece of vacillation, though probably it will not be the last. I agree that, as regards overcrowding, the position is not materially changed. In one or two not terribly important respects, there is something in the nature of an improvement, but that improvement is subject to the statutory provision that there is to be an over-all, proportion whereby the local authority does not incur a loss of less than one as against a loss of two on the part of the State. The 2 to 1 proportion must be maintained, and as that was supposed to be the basis of the previous Act, there is, not much change there. But the terribly important change, the grave change, is in respect of slum clearance and there, certainly in the case of London, and, I imagine, of a considerable number of other local authorities, especially in the large towns of England and Wales, whereas the proportion of the State contribution to the local authority contribution was formerly 4½ to 1, it is now reduced to 2 to I. The over-all proportion, covering slum clearance and overcrowding, is reduced from about 3 to 1 to 2 to 1 and that will be a severe financial blow to the local authorities. It is no good saying that here and there improvement is made, because all the time, by statutory provision, that over-all proportion of 2 to 1, as between the State and the local authorities, will operate.
In the transitory period the Minister is taking power to act in a manner whereby local authorities who are already, in good faith, placing housing contracts, will be, as I think, unjustly penalised. The Minister admits that, on the whole, the financial position of the local authorities is being worsened, and his defence is that the interest rate is down by 1½ per cent. The actual figure is disputable, but, in any case, he ignores the consideration


that in many respects costs have gone up. It has always seemed to me a great pity that the Ministry has not taken real steps to control the prices of building materials in regard to which local authorities are often victimised. In Scotland, for example, I understand that local authorities are complaining that the cost of building has gone up since 1930 by £110 per house in a number of cases. If the cost of construction has gone up, that probably more than cancels out any saving due to the reduction of the rate of interest.
In any event, while that argument of the reduced rate of interest might be a theoretical justification—I am not saying that it is—for the right hon. Gentleman saying that the total loss to the State and to the local authorities ought to be reduced, and that the total amount of subsidy from public funds ought to be reduced, it is no justification for changing the proportion in which the deficit is shared between the State and the local authorities to the damage and prejudice of the local authorities. The argument about a reduced rate of interest is only an excuse on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, who, in these matters, is much too bright to expect us to take that argument seriously. Again, I say that the purpose of the Bill is to save money for His Majesty's Treasury. It is one of the first of the economy Measures in the new campaign to be led by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health for a reduction of expenditure on the social services.
The Minister of Health in my experience is not a terribly good friend to the-ratepayers. Certainly he has not proved himself one to-day. [HON. MEMBERS: "Are you?"] I am the best friend the ratepayer ever had. I treat him honestly, and tell him what he is getting for his money. But the Minister in this Bill is not a good friend to the ratepayer. He is making a serious attack on the finances of the local authorities and either the ratepayer will be penalised or something else will happen. But the Minister is bent nevertheless upon maintaining his personal popularity, and so from time to time he makes speeches urging that this or that improvement should be made in municipal housing, and that the amenities of municipal houses should be increased. My hon. Friend the Member for Peckham has

pointed out the list of improvements regarding which the Minister has made appeals of one kind and another to local authorities. My hon. Friend, who knows what he is talking about, has said that if the advice of the Minister were followed in all respects the additional cost per dwelling would be about £200. But every time these speeches of the Minister come out, the publicity department gets to work, and I do not wonder that the expense of publicity at the Ministry of Health has gone up from £1,250 a year, which was the figure when my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) was there, to £3,350. Every time these speeches are made the newspapers are encouraged to say that the Minister of Health is asking for baths in these houses and for separate bathrooms and for improvements in this, that and the other respect, and that he is going to provide better houses. But does the Minister pay for those improvements? No, Sir. The right hon. Gentleman hands the baby on to my hon. Friend the Member for Brightside (Mr. Marshall) and other hon. Members who are on local authorities. The right hon. Gentleman gets the stories and we pay the bills. But the local authorities are beginning to wake up to the methods of the right hon. Gentleman. Nor do we forget that recently, in connection with superannuation, the right hon. Gentleman was very kind, but that we had to pay. Similarly, the hon. lady the Member for Wallsend (Miss Ward) wants to get the right hon. Gentleman out of a difficulty in connection with old age pensioners in public institutions, but again we should have to pay. I am getting a little bit tired of the right hon. Gentleman earning encomiums for solving these problems, not at the expense of the Treasury, but at the expense of the local authorities.

Miss Ward: The right hon. Gentleman-knows as well as I do that the Standing Orders prevent me from suggesting any charge on the Government. If I had the right, I would make this a charge on the Government, because then I should know that the old people would get it.

Mr. Morrison: In that case, perhaps the hon. Lady will join with me one day in trying to get a new Standing Order making it impossible for the Minister to adopt any methods by which he makes charges on the local authorities. How is


the deficit to be made up? If in future the proportion on slum clearance is to be two to one as between the State and the local authority, instead of four-and-a-half to one, it will mean that money formerly coming from the Treasury will have to come from somewhere else or that the work will not be done. Either the rents payable by the tenants will have to be increased, which will be a very serious matter for these poor people who come from slum areas—and let it be remembered that a great part of the overcrowded population is economically in very much the same position as the slum population—or the rates will have to be increased. If the rates go up by order of the Minister of Health, I suppose that he and his political associates will denounce us for having put them up; but I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we shall come back and tell the truth about it.

Viscountess Astor: It will be the first time.

Mr. Morrison: The Noble Lady is feeling very sore, because I have been speaking in her constituency recently.

Viscountess Astor: I hope the right hon. Gentleman will come again.

Mr. Morrison: What will probably happen in some areas, either because the rates are already very high or because the local authority, being backward, will not face the responsibility, is that the local authority will tend to slow down or to stop slum clearance altogether. I would remind the House that this move backward follows another one in 1935 by the Minister of Health at that time. Sir Hilton Young. The Overcrowding Act was not only an Overcrowding Act, but one to increase compensation to slum property owners at the expense of the local authorities. The result has been that by altering the basis of compensation on the value of the site, local authorities are being involved in additional compensation to slum property owners to the extent of between 25 and 50 per cent. The Ministry of Health put that burden on the local authorities by legislation, but no additional grant was made towards it, Time after time the financial burden upon the local authorities is increased, there is a tendency for the State to reduce its own financial burdens, and yet we are asked

to believe that this is a Housing Bill. Some hon. Members have been welcoming it as a move in the direction of better housing. I cannot see it. I say to the House again that I do not regard it as a Housing Bill at all, but I regard it as an economy Bill, the beginnings of a new Geddes axe applied to the social services.
Some hon. Members representing rural constituencies have really convinced themselves that this is a Bill for the encouragement, assistance, and development of municipal housing under the auspices of rural councils. I speak for myself, and I may get myself into trouble for saying so, but I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Mr. Richards) in thinking, with great respect, that the rural district council is not an authority that ought to be expected to be able to deal with the housing problem. How long we are going on with rural district councils as housing authorities and—and here I may get myself into more trouble—with rural and urban district councils as town planning authorities, I do not know. I say that in these rural districts nothing less than the county council ought to be faced with the problem. But this is not a Bill for the increase of municipal rural housing. The financial terms which it offers to the local authorities are less than those which my right hon. Friend offered in his Bill of 1931, which was strangled by the National Government when it came in, with the results that my right hon. Friend authoritatively put before the House in his opening speech this afternoon.
But let us look at the Clause and let us see what the purpose of the Clause obviously is. It is a Clause which provides that the rural district councils can be paid by the State £10 per year for building a municipal house. The rural district council must pay another £1, and in certain circumstances the county council can be required to pay another £1. That can be a maximum of £12 altogether, but directly that is done the rural district council is given facilities, and in my judgment encouraged, to evade its municipal responsbilities altogether and to make an arrangement with the landlord or the farmer for the purpose of building cottages at the public expense under the tied-house system. The tied cottage is bad enough in all conscience, but to proceed to finance it at the public expense is not a progressive move forward; it is a


backward move. Obviously that is the intention, for the Clause provides that any person may undertake the responsibility by arrangement with the local authority, in which case the whole of the Minister's grant is payable through the rural district council to the person in question. But then in Clause 3, paragraph (b), it is perfectly clear what is contemplated, because the rent is related to the
payment of wages in lieu of payment in cash for the purpose of any minimum rate of wages fixed by the said committee under the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Act, 1924.
Therefore, what we are doing by this Measure is not encouraging the provision of rural houses by the rural district councils, but is a new form of subsidy to the landlord and the farmer at the public expense. That is what it is for. Just as the other provisions are to save the Treasury money, this is to provide, in accordance with Tory policy, subsidies in the rural areas at the public expense to the political friends of the Conservative party. On this point my right hon. Friend the Member for West Stirling (Mr. Johnston) quoted in the House the statements of Committees and Royal Commissions in a speech which he made on the Housing (Agricultural Population) (Scotland) Bill on 9th November, 1937. This is what was said by one committee, a Scottish committee, whose report was signed by men of the type of Dr. Leslie Mackenzie and Sir William Younger. Speaking of rural housing, the committee said:
The local authorities should build such houses and let them to tenants. In any event we cannot believe that public sentiment will permit of public funds being used to erect houses whose occupation shall be in the absolute control of the employer.
Here is the Government doing exactly the thing that moderate-minded men condemned 20 years ago. This housing evil, slums and overcrowding, is a product of a century of the social order which is supported by hon. Gentlemen opposite; and if their social system had had any self-respect, and if they had had a proper sense of shame, they would have wiped away this evil years ago. Instead of wiping the evil away, they are bringing in this Bill to increase the financial difficulties of the local authorities for the purpose of slowing down the process of slum clearance, and of handing out subsidies to the landlord and farmer friends who vote for the Conservative party in

the rural areas. This is not a Housing Bill. It is a Bill for two purposes: (1) to save the money of the Treasury, and, (2), to provide subsidies for the political friends of the party opposite. For these reasons we shall, without any hesitation, go into the Lobby for the Amendment.

10.27 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Bernays): After the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hackney (Mr. H. Morrison) to which we have just listened, it would be well if I spent the last half-hour of the Debate in trying to get back to the terms of the Bill. The Bill introduces two important changes in Exchequer subsidies. It provides a uniform subsidy for slum clearance and the relief of overcrowding, and a new specialised subsidy for the general needs of the agricultural population. That is the gist of the Bill. It is as well to state that when I recall how the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood) described this very simple Bill. He said it betrays the local authorities, the poor and the nation. Anyone just coming into the House at that moment and hearing that sentence might well have thought that we were proposing to introduce a Bill to establish the totalitarian State. I wonder what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hackney and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield would really say if the Government did produce a bad Bill. They would have nothing left with which to describe it but a bankrupt vocabulary.
I would like to deal first with a complicated question put to me by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield about the Financial Resolution. He asked whether in the Financial Resolution the Government would be willing to leave open the conditions under which the higher subsidy of £6 10s. is to be paid so that Amendments may be moved in Committee. I am advised that a limitation to show the fundamental conditions under which grant is to be payable is something which is regarded by the Government as essential, and must be included in the Financial Resolution. The fundamental condition as regards the £6 10s. grant is that it should be restricted to certain cases only, as defined. To leave out those conditions would open


the door to the payment of this extra £1 generally. The similarly fundamental condition in regard to the second grant, the agricultural subsidy, is satisfied by the inclusion of the words "agricultural population" in the Resolution. [HON. MEMBERS: "No answer."] It is the only answer which the right hon. Gentleman will get. I am used to having my replies described by members of the Opposition as being totally inadequate.
Now I come to some of the objections raised to this Bill. There was the objection of the right hon. Member for Wakefield to the subsidy being paid per house. He said it was so impersonal, that what we had to consider was the souls of the people in these places. I agree, but we are still considering the souls of the people when we are dealing with their houses. The subsidy does not cease to be concerned with souls when it is concerned with houses. The main considerations in the decision of the Government to make this recommendation to the House were these: First, that it was undesirable to have two different bases of contribution for two heads of the programme. Considerations of practical convenience suggest the advantage of calculating both the Exchequer and the rate contributions on the same basis, and that the basis of the house. The second consideration was that the basis per house was preferred by the local authorities. I was waiting to see whether the right hon. Member for South Hackney would make this point strongly, considering that it is in the Amendment moved by the Official Opposition, but he evidently remembered that in the joint report of the Housing and Public Health Committee and the Finance Committee of the London County Council it was definitely stated that they accepted the proposal of my right hon. Friend that such contribution shall take the form of a payment for each new dwelling provided for this purpose.

Mr. H. Morrison: Mind you, I was speaking for the Opposition. But will the hon. Gentleman be sufficiently fair to add for the information of the House that the Council attached this condition: provided it was thereby financially in no worse position than it is now?

Mr. Bernays: We were on the point that this is a subsidy per house, and that is supported by the London County

Council. It is impossible to separate the right hon. Gentleman from his position, to see him as two different personages, one as the leader of the London County Council and one as a leading member of His Majesty's Opposition. We have to take him as we see him. We had an interesting and helpful speech from the hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris). He suggested that the subsidy ought to be per room. That proposal has been discussed, but has never found any general favour. The local authorities are of the opinion that it has no material advantage, and the general consensus of opinion seems to be that a subsidy per house is better.
Now I come to the objection of the Opposition that the cottage subsidy is too low. As the House knows, it is £5 10s. for 40 years, and it is available equally for houses to abate overcrowding and those to accommodate slum dewellers. Admitted that the subsidy under the 1930 Act for the average house, based on the number being rehoused, was about £9 but in calculating the value of the subsidy—and this point has never been successfully challenged—we must take into account the fall in interest rates. In March 1930, the interest on loans for the Public Works Loans Board was 5 per cent.; now it is 3⅝ per cent. It is difficult to exaggerate, in this question of the housing conditions of the country the beneficent result of the prudent and far-sighted policy of His Majesty's Government. [Laughter.]
I know that fact is not realised by the Opposition, but it is there for all to see in the number of houses the Government have built and in the number of houses, built by hon. Members opposite. Though the subsidy for actual slum clearance is being reduced in terms of money, it is not being reduced in terms of its value to the tenant and to the rent pool. When the fall in interest rates is taken into account, the amount of the subsidy is approximately equivalent on the average to the original subsidy authorised under the Greenwood Act of 1930. Further than that, many local authorities are better off than they were before.
The new subsidy will be given not merely for slum clearance but for overcrowding as well, whereas in the latter case the subsidy was previously given only for very special circumstances. In


future, for every two houses built, one for slum clearance and one for overcrowding, the local authorities will receive an Exchequer subsidy of £11 where before they received an Exchequer subsidy of only £9. I cannot see how the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hackney can justify his statement regarding a great economy campaign.
On the question of housing prices, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield attempted to ridicule the statement of my right hon. Friend that building prices were steadying for a fall. What are the-facts? In May, the cost of houses was £370, which was the peak figure. In the intervening period, the list three figures available are £368, £365, and £360. I think those figures justify in the letter and in the spirit the statement made by my right hon. Friend. Now, on a question which mainly concerns London—

Mr. Silkin: Can the Parliamentary Secretary give us not the comparison with May but the comparison with 1930?

Mr. Johnston: The hon. Gentleman has given us figures relating to the decrease in interest rates between 1930 and now. Why does he not give us a comparison of the cost of building between 1930 and now? Why does he go back only to May?

Mr. Bernays: I have not actually the figure with me. I give the figures out of my head, and therefore I cannot be certain that they are accurate. I think that the difference is something in the nature of £25. It has been stated that whereas in the past there has been a subsidy of £21 5s. per flat, the minimum is now to be £16 10s. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hackney argued that there would be less subsidy in the future than in the past and that a much lower proportion of it would be borne by the Exchequer. What has to be taken into account is the fact that it is a subsidy graded according to the cost of the land, and, although the minimum is £16 10s. for a flat on a site costing between £1,500 and £4,000 an acre, it rises as high as £39 on a flat costing more than £28,000 an acre The estimates' of the Ministry of Health do not suggest that the London County Council will be placed in a worse position financially with the new subsidy than they would be in if the present subsidy were continued The improvement made under

the new Bill in the subsidy for flats for the abatement of overcrowding is £5 per flat on land up to £10,000 an acre, and £6 per flat on land costing more than £10,000 an acre.
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hackney argued that the present standard of housing could be improved. Clearly, however, that is essentially a question for the future, and the London County Council are hardly justified in asking the Minister to base an Exchequer subsidy on an assumption that the policy of the London County Council and other authorities building flats will be different in the future from what it has been in the past. The substantial increase which has been made in the scale for flats, as compared with that-provided in the Act of 1935, is the result of a careful review of all that has been said on behalf of local authorities, including such questions as the standard of accommodation and the density.
London, after all, is a very rich city, and I suggest that it is not reasonable to ask that the cost of these amenities, however desirable they may be, should be borne altogether by the Exchequer. As to the complaint of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the 2 to 1 basis of Exchequer and local rates contributions, it seems a favourable one by comparison with other grant-aided services. Only a few of the largest authorities build flats, and they are not those which have the largest rate burden. Wakefield, for instance, which, I think, builds entirely cottages, has a housing, rate of 1s. 1d. in the £, while London, which is the chief scene of flat building, has a housing rate, I think, of 2d. in the £.

Mr. H. Morrison: So our rates ought to be higher.

Mr. Bernays: I would point out that the Exchequer contribution towards flats, is substantially higher than that afforded, under the Act of 1935. The minimum is now £11 a year for 49 years, as compared with £6 under the Act of 1935. The right hon. Gentleman has attempted to suggest that this Bill is part of a great, economy campaign. So far, however, from the Government spending less, money on their housing campaign as a result of this Bill, they are actually spending more. My right hon. Friend pointed out that we are now spending out of the national Exchequer £14,500,000 on the


rehousing of the people, and it is estimated that, before this building campaign is completed, we shall be spending £17,500,000. That does not seem to show much evidence of an economy campaign.
Were it really true that the local authorities were expecting a reduction in their resources, there would be a rush to complete large numbers of houses at the present rate. Local authorities would be running up houses now at the desperate speed, of building firms rushing in cargoes before a new tariff is put on. But, in fact, nothing of the sort is happening. In formulating our proposals, the associations of local authorities were consulted, and, in general, they expressed their agreement. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield mentioned certain towns that were suffering. I was very interested, naturally, when he mentioned Bristol. That is a place where slum clearance will be extended beyond this year. At the same time, there is a serious problem of overcrowding, so that the reduction in one subsidy will be met by an increase in the other. The position of Bristol will be much the same as before. With regard to Wakefield, the right hon. Gentleman will be delighted to hear that the position will be improved. Wakefield, having completed the original slum clearance scheme, will gain from the overcrowding subsidy. This subsidy, of course, varies in different cases, but, on balance, there will be a total gain. It is significant that the towns which will benefit most are those, for the most part, on the north-east coast, where there are the worst housing conditions.
It is stated that the Bill will mean higher rents, and higher rents are stated as one of the objections in the official Amendment. But if I caught the words of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield rightly, he did not seem to wish to stand very firmly on the question of higher rents. He stated, after one or two sentences, "At any rate, rents will not fall." Far from increasing rents, this Bill will lower them. These new subsidies are sufficient to enable cottages to be built and let at rents 6d. to 9d. a week below the present average. They can be let at 6s. 3d. a week, as compared with 6s. 9d. to 7s. for existing houses.
Now I come to the question of overcrowding. There was a complaint from

the right hon. Gentleman that the standard of overcrowding was too low. But, as my right hon. Friend said, this is only a beginning. It will take six or seven years. [Interruption.] At any rate we did begin. The party opposite never began. It will take six or seven years for local authorities, with the labour available, to meet the minimum standard laid down in the Act of 1935. The minimum had to be low, because there was a penalty provision, and obviously, therefore, you had to have a standard of overcrowding that could reasonably be established. There is no justification for the charge that our compaign against overcrowding has failed.
It was inevitable that, following on the 1935 Act, local authorities, whose output of houses must be conditioned by the labour available, concentrated their attention on the slum clearance programme that they knew. Before the job was begun, there had to be a survey as to the extent of overcrowding. That survey has taken place, and that in itself is certainly an advance, and from that local authorities have proceeded to the task of decrowding by better distribution of existing accommodation, the removal of lodgers and so on, and from there many have been able to make a beginning with the provision of new houses. Some 17,000 houses have already been approved for this purpose. There is abundant evidence that substantial inroads have already been made into the problem of overcrowding.
I should like to say a word or two about the agricultural side of the Bill. There is a new and specialised subsidy for agricultural houses. The "Times" to-day describes it as an enormous subsidy. Why is it necessary? Because of the gap between agricultural wages and the cost of building cottages. It is impossible for a worker with 32s. or 33s. a week to pay an economic rent. What are urgently needed are cottages at round about 3s. 6d. a week, and it is impossible to provide them without this subsidy. The Government believe that the provision of these cottages will be a real contribution to agriculture. The shortage of labour is particularly evident amongst the young men. I see from the most recent census returns that, of every five agricultural workers who were engaged in the industry at the age of 25, two have found work in the towns by the time they reach 40.
It is generally agreed that the shortage of housing accommodation is one of the main factors of this steady drift to the towns. A young man comes to marry and his wife is not prepared to live in conditions which were good enough for his father. With new methods of agriculture a new type of agricultural worker is needed, and we shall not get him until we give him a new type of house. I was asked whether there was any proposal to give a special additional subsidy in areas like the Cotswolds in order to encourage building in stone. There is no specific provision for this but, where the use of stone is approved and it unduly raises the cost of building, the factor might possibly be taken into account in deciding whether the higher rate of subsidy provided for in Clause 2 ought to be given.
My hon. Friend the Member for Frome (Mrs. Tate) raised the question of amenities. I would stress the importance that my right hon. Friend attaches to the preservation of the countryside. The Ministry of Health is doing its utmost to secure that the houses now being built are aesthetically worthy of their surroundings. We shall not relax our efforts under the new scheme to secure that local authorities build houses which are good to look at as well as to live in. It is to be hoped that some of our best architects will turn their attention to cottage design. The beauty of the countryside is the greatest treasure, after all, that has been handed down to us from the past, and there would be nothing more disastrous or more insane than to waste, dissipate and destroy in our profligacy this priceless and irreplaceable heritage.
I have not time to deal with a point made very strongly from the Opposition—the complaint against the financial assistance that is being given to landlords. It is only being given in exceptional cases. The provision is designed to meet the situation described in paragraph 24 of the report of the Rural Housing Advisory Committee. Obviously, the best plan in rural development is group development near the village, but this is not always practicable; hence assistance to private enterprise to provide houses upon restricted rental conditions. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hackney, who was so indignant, that similar provisions were inserted in the Wheatley Act in 1924. I

would call his attention to Section 2, paragraph (1) of the Wheatley Act. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield said, "Get back to the Wheatley Act." We have got back to the Wheatley Act in this connection.

Mr. Johnston: The tied house.

Mr. Bernays: I ask the right hon. Gentleman, as I have not time to read it out, to study what I have said and he will find that it is substantially accurate.

Mr. Johnston: Does it specify the tied house?

Mr. Bernays: Neither does this specify the tied house. No doubt Mr. Wheatley held exactly the same theoretical views as the party opposite on the iniquity of assisting private enterprise, but that was before he had to draft a Housing Bill, and, like the practical and sensible man he was, when he came up against the difficulty, he knew that he could solve it only by subsidising private enterprise.

Mr. Greenwood: Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House the number of private enterprise houses that were built under the 1924 Act?

Mr. Bernays: Certainly, but not without notice. This is only another illustration of how differently right hon. Gentlemen act when they sit upon these benches compared with what they say on the opposite benches. This Bill has been assailed by right hon. Gentlemen of the Opposition by every weapon of insult and indignity. What is it all about? In no other sphere of public policy have the National Government been more conspicuously successful than in housing. Judged on our record by any test, for the year ended September, 1931, the last year of the Labour Government, 200,000 houses were built, and for the year ended September, 1937, 337,000. During the period of the National Government 800,000 people have been moved from the slums, and 300,000 are ready to move when the buildings now under construction are completed. Compare that with the time when the Opposition were in power. Slum clearance was negative, a mere trickle, a bare thousand persons, and under the National Government that trickle became a rivulet, that rivulet a stream, and now it is not merely a river but a torrent. When the supporters of


the Government go into the Lobby tonight they can, with regard to their housing record, look back to the past with pride and to the future with confidence.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 258; Noes, 137.

Division No. 100.]
AYES.
[11. 0 p.m.


Acland-Treyte, Lt.-col. G. J.
Eckarsley, P. T.
Mabane, W. (Huddersfield)


Adams, S. V. T. (Leeds, W.)
Edmondson, Major Sir J.
MacAndrew, Colonel Sir C. G.


Albery, Sir Irving
Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.
M'Connell, Sir J.


Amery, Rt. Hon. L. C. M. S.
Ellis, Sir G.
McCorquodale, M. S.


Anderson, Sir A. Garrett (C. of Ldn.)
Elliston, Capt. G. S.
MacDonald, Rt. Hon. M. (Ross)


Aske, Sir R. W.
Elmley, Viscount
MacDonald, Sir Murdoch (Inverness)


Assheton, R.
Emmott, C. E. G. C.
Macdonald, Capt. P. (Isle of Wight)


Astor, Major Hon. J. J. (Dover)
Emrys-Evans, P. V.
McEwen, Capt. J. H. F.


Astor, Viscountess (Plymouth, Sutton)
Evans, D. O. (Cardigan)
McKie, J. H.


Astor, Hon. W. W. (Fulham, E.)
Everard, W. L.
Macmillan, H. (Stockton-on-Tess)


Atholl, Duchess of
Fildes, Sir H.
Macnamara, Capt. J. R. J.


Baillie, Sir A. W. M.
Fleming, E. L.
Magnay, T.


Balfour, Capt. H. H. (lsle of Thanet)
Fremantle, Sir F. E.
Maitland, A.


Balniel, Lord
Furness, S. N.
Makins, Brig.-Gen. E.


Barclay-Harvey, Sir C. M.
Fyfe, D. P. M.
Manningham-Buller, Sir M.


Barrie, Sir C. C.
George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)
Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.


Beamish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.
Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir J.
Marsden, Commander A.


Beaumont, M. W. (Aylesbury)
Gledhill, G.
Mason, Lt.-Col. Hon. G. K. M.


Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'h)
Gluekstein, L. H.
Maxwell, Hon. S. A.


Beechman, N. A.
Glyn, Major Sir R. G. C.
Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.


Bennett, Sir E. N.
Graham, Captain A. C. (Wirral)
Mellor, Sir J. S. P. (Tamworth)


Bernays, R. H.
Grant-Ferris, R.
Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)


Bird, Sir R. B.
Gretton, Col. Rt. Hon. J.
Mitcheson, Sir G. G.


Bossom, A. C.
Gridley, Sir A. B.
Moore, Lieut.-Col. Sir T. C. R.


Boulton, W. W.
Grimston, R. V.
Muirhead, Lt.-Col. A. J.


Bowater, Col. Sir T. Vansittart
Gritten, W. G. Howard
Munro, P.


Boyce, H. Leslie
Guest, Hon. I. (Brecon and Radnor)
Nall, Sir J.


Brissoe, Capt. R. G.
Guest, Maj. Hon. O. (C'mb'rw'll, N. W.)
Neven-Spence, Major B. H. H.


Brocklebank, Sir Edmund
Guinness, T. L. E. B.
Nicholson, G. (Farnham)


Brown, Col. D. C. (Hexham)
Gunston, Capt. Sir D. W.
Nicolson, Hon. H. G.


Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Newbury)
Hannah, I. C.
O'Neill, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh


Browne, A. C. (Belfast, W.)
Harbord, A.
Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. W. G. A.


Bullock, Capt. M.
Harvey, T. E. (Eng. Univ's.)
Orr-Ewing, I. L.


Burghley, Lord
Haslam, H. C. (Horncastle)
Owen, Major G.


Butcher, H. W.
Haslam, Sir J. (Bolton)
Patrick, C. M.


Butler, R. A.
Heilgers, Captain F. F. A.
Peat, C. U.


Campbell Sir E. T.
Hely-Hutchinson, M. R.
Pickthorn, K. W. M.


Cartland, J. R. H.
Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel A. P.
Pilkington, R.


Castlereagh, Viscount
Hepburn, P. G. T. Buchan.
Ponsonby, Col. C. E.


Cazalet, Thelma (lslington, E.)
Herbert, Major J. A.(Monmouth)
Porritt, R. W.


Channon, H.
Higgs, W. F.
Rankin, Sir R.


Chapman, A. (Rutherglen)
Hoare, Rt. Hon. Sir S.
Rathbone, Eleanor (English Univ's.)


Christie, J. A.
Holdsworth, H.
Rathbone, J. R. (Bodmin)


Clarke, Colonel R. S. (E. Grinstead)
Hopkinson, A.
Rayner, Major R. H.


Colfox, Major W. P.
Horsbrugh, Florence
Reed, A. C. (Exeter)

Colman, N. C. D.
Howitt, Dr. A. B.
Reid, Sir D. D. (Down)


Colville, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. D. J.
Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hack., N.)



Conant, Captain R. J. E.
Hulbert, N. J.
Rickards, G. W. (Skipton)


Cook, Sir T. R. A. M. (Norfolk N.)
Hume, Sir G. H.
Roberts, W. (Cumberland, N.)


Cooper, Rt. Hn. T. M. (E'nburgh, W.)
Hunter, T.
Robinson, J. R. (Blackpool)


Courthope, Col. Rt. Hon. Sir G. L.
James, Wing-Commander A. W. H.
Ropner, Colonel L.


Craven-Ellis. W.
Jarvis, Sir J. J.
Rowlands, G.



Jones, Sir G. W. H. (S'k N' w' gt' n
Royds, Admiral Sir P. M. R.


Critchley, A.
Jones, Sir H. Haydn (Merioneth)
Ruggles-Brise, Colonel Sir E. A.


Crooke, Sir J. S.
Jones L. (Swansea w.)
Russell, Sir Alexander


Crookshank, Capt. H. F. C.
Keeling E. H.
Russell, R. J. (Eddisbury)


Croom-Johnson, R. P.
Kerr, H. W. (Oldham)
Salmon, Sir I.


Cross, R. H.
Kerr, J. Graham (Scottish Univs.)
Salt, E. W.


Crowder, J. F. E.
Keyes, Admiral of the Fleet Sir R.
Samuel, M. R. A.


Cruddas, Col. B.
Kimball, L.
Sanderson, Sir F. B.


Culverwell, C. T.
Lamb, Sir J. Q.
Savory, Sir Servington


Davidson, Viscountess
Law, Sir A. J. (High Peak)
Selley, H. R.


Davies, C. (Montgomery)
Leech, Sir J. W.
Shakespeare, G. H.


Davits, Major Sir G. F. (Yeovil)
Less-Jones, J.
Shaw, Major P. S. (Wavertree)


De Chair, S. S.
Leighton, Major B. E P
Shute, Colonel Sir J. J.


Denman, Hon. R. D.
Lennox-Boyd, A. T. L.
Sinclair, Col. T. (Queen's U. B'If 'st)


Doland, G. F.
Levy, T.
Smith, Brasewell (Dulwich)


Duckworth, Arthur (Shrewsbury)
Lewis, O.
Smith, L. W. (Hallam)


Duckworth, W. R. (Mass Side)
Liddall, W. S.
Smith, Sir R. W. (Aberdeen)


Dugdale, Captain T. L.
Lipson, D. L.
Somervell, Sir D. B. (Crewe)


Duggan, H. J.
Locker-Lampson, Comdr. O. S.
Somerville, A. A. (Windsor)


Duncan, J. A. L.
Loftus, P. C.
Southby, Commander Sir A. R. J.


Dunglass, Lord
Lovat-Fraser, J. A.
Spears, Brigadier-General E. L.


Eastwood, J. F.
Lyons, A. M.
Storey, S.




Stourton, Major Hon. J. J.
Wakefield, W. W.
Wilson, Lt.-Co l. Sir A. T. (Hitchin)


Strauss, E. A. (Southwark, N.)
Walker-Smith, Sir J.
Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel G.


Strauss, H. G. (Norwich)
Wallace, Capt. Rt. Hon. Euan
Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl


Stuart, Lord C. Crichton-(N'thw'h)
Ward, Lieut.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)
Wise, A. R.


Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)
Ward, Irene M. B. (Wallsend)
Womersley, Sir W. J.


Sutcliffe, H.
Warrender, Sir V.
Wood, Hon. C. I. C.


Tate, Mavis C.
Waterhouse, Captain C.
Wood, Rt. Hon. Sir Kingsley


Taylor, C. S. (Eastbourne)
Walt, Major G. S. Harvie
Wragg, H.


Taylor, Vice-Adm. E. A. (Padd., S.)
Wayland, Sir W. A
Wright, Wing-commander J. A. C.


Thomas, J. P. L.
Wedderburn, H. J. S.
Young, A. S. L. (Partick)


Thomson, Sir J. D. W.
Whiteley, Major J. P. (Buckingham)



Tree, A. R. L. F.
Wickham, Lt.-Col. E. T. R.
TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—


Tryon, Major Rt. Hon. G. C.
Williams, H. G. (Croydon, S.)
Captain Hope and Colonel Kerr.


Turton, R. H.
Willoughby de Eresby, Lord





NOES.


Acland, R. T. D. (Barnstaple)
Griffiths, J. (Llanelly)
Parkinson, J. A.


Adams, D. (Consett)
Groves, T. E.
Pethick-Lawrence, Rt. Hon. F. W.


Adams, D. M. (Poplar, S.)
Guest, Dr. L. H. (Islington, N.)
Price, M. P.


Adamson, W. M.
Hall, G. H. (Aberdare)
Pritt, D. N.


Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'Isbr.)
Hall, J. H. (Whitechapel)
Quibell, D. J. K.


Ammon, C. G.
Hardie, Agnes
Richards, R. (Wrexham)


Anderson, F. (Whitehaven)
Harris, Sir P. A.
Ridley, G.


Banfield, J. W.
Hayday, A.
Riley, B.


Barnes, A. J.
Henderson, A. (Kingswinford)
Ritson, J.


Barr, J.
Henderson, J. (Ardwick)
Roberts, Rt. Hon. F. O. (W. Brom.)


Batey, J.
Henderson, T. (Tradeston)
Robinson, W. A. (St. Helens)


Bellenger, F. J.
Hicks, E. G.
Salter, Dr. A. (Bermondsey)


Benson, G.
Hills, A. (Pontefract)
Sexton, T. M.


Bevan, A.
Hollins, A.
Shinwell, E.


Broad, F. A.
Hopkin, D.
Silkin, L.


Bromfield, W.
Jagger, J.
Silverman, S. S.


Brown, C. (Mansfield)
Jenkins, Sir W. (Neath)
Simpson, F. B.


Brown, Rt. Hon. J. (S. Ayrshire)
Johnston, Rt. Hon. T.
Sinclair, Rt. Hon. Sir A. (C'thn's)


Buchanan, G.
Jones, A. C. (Shipley)
Smith, Ben (Rotherhithe)


Burke, W. A.
Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)
Smith, E. (Stoke)


Cape, T.
Kelly, W. T.
Smith, T. (Normanton)


Cassells, T.
Kennedy, Rt. Hon. T.
Sorensen, R. W.


Charleton, H. C.
Kirby, B. V.
Stephen, C.


Chater, D.
Kirkwood, D.
Stewart, W. J. (H'ght'n-Ie-Sp'ng)


Cluse, W. S.
Lathan, G.
Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, N)


Cooks, F. S.
Lawson, J. J.
Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)


Cove, W. G.
Leach, W.
Thurtle, E.


Cripps, Hon. Sir Stafford
Lee, F.
Tinker, J. J.


Daggar, G.
Leslie, J. R.
Viant, S. P.


Davidson, J. J. (Maryhill)
Logan, D. G.
Walkden, A. G.


Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)
Lunn, W.
Walker, J.


Day, H.
Macdonald, G. (Ince)
Watkins, F. C.


Debbie, W.
McEntee, V. La T.
Watson, W. McL.


Dunn, E. (Rother Valley)
McGhee, H. G.
Westwood, J.


Ede, J. C.
Maclean, N.
White, H. Graham


Edwards, Sir C. (Bedwellty)
Marshall, F.
Wilkinson, Ellen


Fletcher, Lt.-Comdr. R. T. H.
Maxton, J.
Williams, D. (Swansea, E.)


Foot, D. M.
Messer, F.
Williams, E. J. (Ogmore)


Frankel, D.
Milner, Major J.
Willams, T. (Don Valley)


Gallacher, W.
Montague, F.
Wilson, C. H. (Attercliffe)


Gardner, B. W.
Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Hackney, S.)
Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)


Gibson, R. (Greenock)
Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)
Woods, G. S. (Finsbury)


Graham, D. M. (Hamilton)
Muff, G.
Young, Sir R. (Newton)


Green, W. H. (Deptford)
Nathan, Colonel H. L.



Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A.
Naylor, T. E.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES—


Grenfell, D. R.
Oliver, G. H.
Mr. Whiteley and Mr. Mathers.


Griffiths, G. A. (Hemsworth)
Parker, J.



Bill read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the Whole House, for Thursday—[Captain Margesson.]

Orders of the Day — UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT, 1935.

11.13 p.m.

Mr. Lawson: I beg to move:
That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Unemployment Insurance (Insurable Employments) Regulations, which were presented to this

House on the 22nd day of December, 1937, be annulled.
Most Members of the House are aware that the Minister of Labour has made Regulations for the purpose of extending Unemployment Insurance to certain classes of domestic servants. It is true, as the Statutory Committee say in their report, that those Regulations represent a considerable extension of insurance to domestic servants, but it is also true that certain domestic servants, men as well as women, have been excluded from those Regulations. The Minister has power


under the 1935 Act to make Regulations including certain classes of workers hitherto excluded from the Unemployment Insurance Acts. In this case he has exercised his privilege and has made a draft Order which he submitted to the Statutory Committee. They have accepted, generally, what he proposed but they have excluded a certain class, mainly employed in residential and educational institutions. Those who are familar with the problem of domestic servants in relation to unemployment insurance know that there is a long history behind this matter.
Many years ago, the High Court decided that domestic workers in profit-making establishments should be insured, but similar workers in other institutions were not insured. That caused a very great deal of difficulty for many years. When the Unemployment Insurance Act was before the House in 1934, it was decided that the Minister should have certain powers because of the embarrassment that had been caused owing to the exclusion of certain classes. Domestic servants in private establishments were excluded, of course, but the High Court decision excluded certain stokers, storekeepers, pithead bath attendants, lavatory attendants, orderlies, club stewards, lodge-keepers and caretakers, and certain other classes. The Royal Commission which dealt with Unemployment Insurance considered this matter at considerable length. There were two points of view. The minority took the view that all domestic servants, both in private homes and in public institutions, should be insured. There has always been a strong feeling that really the only way to handle this problem is to include all those engaged in domestic service. The majority, however, decided upon the method of giving the Minister certain powers.
There are three different classes of domestic servants, according to the Royal Commission. First, there are domestic servants in private houses. They are not concerned in these Regulations, and whatever I may think about it, I shall not raise that matter to-night. Secondly, there are domestic servants in commercial enterprises, such as hotels and boarding houses, who are already insured. Thirdly, there are those engaged in institutional work. They are

concerned in these Regulations. They are engaged by local government authorities; they work in Government hospitals and other establishments; in voluntary hospitals; in Army, Navy and Air Force institutions; they are caretakers, and servants in canteens, in non-residential colleges and schools and in residential colleges and schools. The Regulations include all the workers I have mentioned in the third class and they represent, as the Statutory Committee rightly says, a considerable extension of Unemployment Insurance. The subject covers such a wide field that I am sure that, if we had been dealing with it earlier in the evening, there would have been a lengthy Debate; but that is not our object to-night.
My object is to make a protest against the fact that the Statutory Committee has decided, while including for insurance men and women engaged in non-residential colleges and schools, to exclude those engaged in residential colleges and schools. I gather that what happened was that Oxford and Cambridge colleges and other well-known schools protested that their domestics had a certain security of tenure which other domestics had not. I must say that I fail to see the difference in most cases between the domestics engaged in non-residential colleges and schools and those engaged in residential colleges and schools. The fact that students do not reside upon the premises does not always make a difference to the work of the domestics. It seems to me that the position is quite untenable that any domestic servants or any class of workers should be excluded from the operation of the Insurance Act and from its benefits merely because they have security of tenure. I have never understood why it was that the general public outside should have the impression that the only time anyone should be insured was when they either wanted benefit or when they were likely to lose their work, and surely the whole attitude of governments in the past, including this Government, has been that we ought to make insurance real insurance and that we ought to include good lives. The argument apparently on the part of the authorities of the great colleges—and the London colleges too, excluding one of them, which made representations in favour—was in the direction of saying that their workers represented good lives and therefore should


be excluded from the operation of the Act. I think it is time there was an end of that kind of thing, and that, if insurance is to be insurance, those who are what are called good lives should be included.
But my main objection to this method is that, while domestic servants in private institutions are excepted, the Minister takes a whole class with the object of including them in insurance and making an end of certain anomalies, but then creates fresh anomalies, because he has taken a whole class, and one single body out of that class has been excepted. The Minister was given the right to make Regulations in order to clear away the rough edges of certain parts of unemployment insurance, but it seems to me that in this exclusion he has made more rough edges instead of taking them away. He has made an exception to certain exceptions. Instead of improving the situation it looks as though he is going to make it worse.
We object to this exclusion, and I move this Prayer because we think that all workers in domestic service ought to be in unemployment insurance, and because no sound reason was put forward by the educational authorities for excluding them. If there were any reasons for excluding them, the same reasons applied to local authorities, hospitals and the rest of the institutions whose workers have been brought within unemployment insurance. The voluntary hospitals put up a good case—and I thought it was a better case than that of the educational institutions—that their domestic servants should be excluded because they had security of tenure. The exclusion of this class is a blunder, for it increases instead of decreases the anomalies which the Minister was supposed to clear up; and it will make for confusion. Altogether it is a bad business. We do not intend to take this matter to a Division for we are conscious of the fact that insurance is being extended to a great mass of workers. We welcome that fact, but we take this opportunity of making our protest against this stupid way of doing things and making bad worse instead of clearing up the difficulties as the Act originally intended.

11.28 p.m.

Mr. Buchanan: Credit is due to the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) for raising this matter. As he

has rightly pointed out, it is almost impossible for us to oppose the amended Regulations, but they raise larger issues than the subject of the Regulations itself. They raise the time-worn issue as to who is to be in unemployment insurance and who is to be out of it. This kind of piecemeal way of adding a little here and a little there has almost broken down in the last few years. I have long thought—and I believe my view is shared by the majority of Members above the Gangway—that nobody should be out of unemployment insurance. The more privileged a workman, like a railwayman, the more reason there is for being inside the insurance scheme. Those who argue that the employés of voluntary hospitals and educational institutions should be left out say that they are in privileged employment; but I believe that in the long run these institutions will find they are taking the wrong line. Some time ago a class of the community that is not always praised in this House had some conversation with me about the employés of this class and unemployment insurance. Among bookmakers, some of the employés are left out of unemployment insurance and some are in. If you work on the credit side, that is, the legitimate side, you are in, but if you work on the illegal side you are out. The bookmakers say frankly that they would like everybody to be in, for the reason—it sounds a rather peculiar one—that if their employés come within unemployment insurance they get a rather better type of employé. In the main the employés want to be within the scheme.
I would say to the voluntary hospitals that a girl who has been in an occupation in which she has been insured will think twice or thrice before going into an occupation which will take her out-with unemployment insurance. While in the old days we had considerable difficulty in persuading people of the benefits of unemployment insurance, to-day the difficulty arises from the numbers of people who want to come into unemployment insurance, and if the Minister wants to assist the voluntary hospitals he will bring them in, because then the hospitals would attract an even better type of workers than they get now. I have a little niece who has come to work in the Middlesex Hospital. She is not without something of the spirit of adventure in leaving her home to come to work in London. Whether she will fit in with the


work or not remains to be seen, but she and others would enter upon such an adventure with the more readiness if there was the knowledge that they were covered by unemployment insurance, and that if the venture did not turn out successfully there would be something upon which to fall back.
I am the more puzzled by the attitude of the Minister for the reason that to some extent these workers in hospitals are covered by insurance, being eligible for unemployment assistance. When a girl in an hospital is flung out of her job, she is, having been subject to health insurance, automatically eligible for unemployment assistance. Why she should be a charge on the Unemployment Assistance Fund and not put on the unemployment insurance scheme I fail to understand.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Butler): Perhaps I may shorten the discussion if I say that the domestic employés of voluntary hospitals are not excluded by these Regulations, and are, in fact, all in.

Mr. Buchanan: Certain classes of them are. I should have referred to the educational centres, because the workers there become chargeable to the Unemployment Assistance Fund. I should like to add that I am thankful that the Statutory Committee did not recommend that these workers should be brought into a scheme similar to that for agricultural workers. I was frightened when this extension was suggested that they would be kept out of the general scheme of unemployment insurance. Educational centres like Cambridge University and Glasgow University are in many cases partly State-aided, and I cannot see what hardship there would be in bringing them in. I share the view of the hon. Gentleman who has spoken from the Opposition Benches, so far as we have gone, and I would plead with the Minister that, having taken this comparatively large step, he should take the comparatively small step now, and include the educational centres. The class that is left out is small. There is a good deal of coming and going between insurable employment and non-insurable employment with that class of worker, and to do as we suggest would make them much more alike. I cannot understand why the Minister of Labour does not do this, because he would attract

the best type of person to this type of work. We think that he is making a serious mistake. Extension of insurance makes for a much better type of worker than formerly, because they feel that their future is safeguarded. I hope that the Minister, after what was said by the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street, will not take the report of the Committee as the final word, and that he will at an early stage include this class of worker within the Bill.

11.38 p.m.

Sir Joseph Nall: I intervene to oppose the Motion, not because I think the Regulations are good, but because I think it desirable to reply to what has been said by speakers who preceded me. It is becoming more and more apparent that the inclusion of so many categories of women workers is a direct means of causing many thousands of good, respectable girls to go into some sort of insurable occupation for just as long as is necessary to qualify for benefit, so that as long as they are allowed to they may scrounge on the dole.

Mr. Buchanan: What proof has the hon. Member of that?

Sir J. Nall: I have quite a lot of proof. If there is an occupation in this country in which there is ample room to spare to-day—

Mr. Buchanan: On a point of Order. An hon. Member has made a gross and offensive remark about a certain class of people in this community and he proposes to adduce no proof. Is it in order for an hon. Member to come here without one iota of proof and slander women who are as good as he is?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Dennis Herbert): I do not think there was any thing personal in what was said, nor is it a proper matter on which to raise a point of Order. The charge was too wide.

Mr. Buchanan: Would it not be customary and gentlemanly that he should give us some proof when making the charge?

Sir J. Nall: It is not my habit, and it is certainly not my intention now, to slander any women or class of women. What I said was that the present system of bringing numerous categories of women workers into the insurance scheme is causing a good many to come into those categories


for just as long as is necessary to qualify for benefit, whereafter they can try to get dismissed and seek to draw benefit in order to scrounge on the dole.

Mr. Buchanan: My impression is that the hon. Gentleman does not know a single thing about it. He does not know one inch about it.

Sir J. Nall: I know quite a number of cases of young women—

Mr. Buchanan: Give us their names and the cases so that we shall have— [HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"] Yes, but the hon. Member is not to be allowed to charge people in this way.

Sir J. Nall: Girls in their teens—

Mr. Buchanan: Who are they?

Sir J. Nall: —become qualified for benefit and try to get dismissed from their occupations for comparatively small offences, and they become an acute problem in questions of social welfare with which we are faced. Any further extension of these schemes of insurance should be directed wholly and solely to those categories of occupation in which there is serious unemployment, when it is right and proper that the people engaged in them should be insured and able to draw benefit. It does need to be emphasised that for young women there are ample and sufficient opportunities of occupation and there is no need for extension of insurance in their case. Hon. Members know that it is much better for young girls to be employed in various categories of domestic occupation, whether in private houses or in institutions, than to be on benefit with nothing to do, when in many cases they fall into temptation to their great moral detriment. I hope that these Regulations will not form a precedent for extension on a wide scale. That certain categories ought to be included from time to time is quite possible, but that the further extension which the Opposition are now advocating would be disastrous is more than proved.

11.42 p.m.

Mr. Dingle Foot: I should not have taken part in this Debate but for the speech of the hon. Member for Hulme (Sir J. Nall). I wonder whether hon. Members who make remarks like that have the faintest knowledge of the machinery of the administration of unemployment benefit. Is not the hon. Member

aware, when he speaks of girls or others scrounging on the dole, with what particularity the attempts made to find work are scrutinised by courts of referees, and how frequently those who are suspected of any practice of the kind to which he has referred are struck off benefit? He alleges that girls try to get into insurable occupations for a short time and then receive benefit, and that for that reason they are reluctant to go into domestic service. It seems to me that the point he has in mind actually strengthens the proposal of the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson). Surely the hon. Member for Hulme must be aware of the reluctance that is always shown by girls or any other class of the community to pass from an insurable into a non-insurable occupation. The very reason why there is so much reluctance to enter domestic service is that it is a non-insurable occupation, and if the hon. Member for Hulme wants to remove the difficulty he has in mind, his best course would be to support the proposal from the Opposition benches that we should not proceed in these matters on piecemeal lines, but that all these categories of workers should be brought within the insurance scheme.

11.44 p.m.

Mr. Ede: I think the first answer to the hon. Member for Hulme (Sir J. Nall) is that among the people who are exempted by the provision against which the Opposition are protesting are more men than women. One knows that the college servants at Cambridge are more men than women, and in many of the big public schools, I understand, a substantial number of the college servants are men. Those are the class of people who are being excluded as a result of the representations that have been made.
I was for two years chairman of the Departmental Committee on Private Schools, and I want to draw attention to the very wide range of schools covered by the term "residential private school." It includes places like Eton, Harrow and Rugby, but descends to a very inferior type of institution in which some of the labour is very badly paid and insecure in its tenure. I know, as the representative of a north of England constituency, living in the south of England, the number of persons who get engagements at these private schools in country towns and villages in the south of England who are left stranded, sometimes after only


a few weeks of employment, because of the failure of the school to make a financial success or because they have had some quarrel with the proprietor. At present I am conducting a correspondence with the proprietor of a private school at Haslemere on behalf of people who were dismissed on grounds that seem to me to be unjust. There are places other than Oxford, Cambridge and the great public schools involved. On the general point, I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) that it is no good taking in merely the good lives and rejecting the bad lives if it is intended that this should be merely an insurance scheme. I regret that the Statutory Committee have made this exception, and I hope the time is not far distant when the whole of these people will be included.

11.48 p.m.

Mr. A. Bevan: The speech of the hon. Member for Hulme (Sir J. Nall) was an astonishing display of superiority and lack of sympathy. It was absolutely amazing to hear a Member of the House of Commons, in 1938, making a speech of that kind. I consider his speech mere impudence, and I hope his constituents will learn all about it. The suggestion that working-class girls make use of insurance benefit in order to become exempt from employment is a charge that I wish were true. My complaint about the working classes is that they are too fond of working. The people who try to avoid work are those represented by the hon. Member. My object in rising, however, was not to say that. The speech of the hon. Member was so stupid that it answers itself. I rose to say that I did not share the view of the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) or the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) on these matters. There seems to be a great tendency on the part of the Opposition to call for the extension of unemployment insurance into too many different categories. I do not believe it is necessary to press the Government to do this. I believe there is a very excellent leverage in the hands of the Government which will cause them to do it more and more as time goes on, because the more the categories of insurance the more the Treasury is going to be relieved of the

obligations of maintaining unemployed people.
The only distinction between unemployment allowance and unemployment insurance benefit is the means test. I should be in favour of addressing all our efforts to the abolition of the means test because the more we reduce that, the more we remove the difference between the insured worker who is still in receipt of benefit and the man or woman who is in receipt of unemployment assistance. The people I represent would be only too pleased to be rid of the means test. The sooner we can get that the better. We have the extension of insurance principles to wider and wider categories of workers. We have recently added agricultural workers. The general result of extensions of this sort is to unload on to the shoulders of the working class the burden of maintaining unemployed members of the working class. What I want to do is to minimise and modify and ultimately abolish the means test so that all workers who are unable to find employment shall receive maintenance at the expense of the Treasury and not of the contributions of the rest of their fellow workers. The Prayer deplores the fact that unemployment insurance has not been extended to a larger number of workers. I do not consider that to be a very important matter at all. I consider that we on this side need care less and less for that aspect of the matter. What we ought to be addressing ourselves to and what we are neglecting is the abolition of the means test, which makes a distinction between people who have exhausted their benefit and people who have not.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I thought the hon. Member himself said some time ago that he could not discuss that matter.

Mr. Bevan: I am not addressing my remarks to the merits or otherwise of the means test but to the fact that it exists at the moment as a distinction between those in receipt of benefit and those in receipt of unemployment assistance and I do not think it is necessary for us to reinforce the Treasury. Whenever a category of workers comes along whose contributions will be useful to subsidise the other workers who may be out of work the Treasury will include them in the area of unemployment benefit. They have an excellent leverage in their hands. I do not desire to reinforce that


leverage. Therefore I say with reluctance that I do not share the view of others who have spoken. Rather would I see the abolition of the difference that divides unemployed workers into two categories. I would rather see them in one category receiving maintenance in consequence of not being able to find employment.

11.55 p.m.

Mr. Tinker: Before the Minister replies, I want to say a few words on behalf of Lancashire women. The hon. Member for Hulme (Sir J. Nall), as the representative of a Lancashire constituency, criticised our womenfolk and said that they are different from other womenfolk. That is what I assume from his remarks.

Sir J. Nall: I did not say anything of the kind.

Mr. Tinker: The hon. Member said that by including other categories of women, it would lead women to work long enough to get whatever benefit unemployment insurance might give to them. That was entirely uncalled for. He appealed for the inclusion of various categories, and said that while extending it they might go further and bring all of them into it. He then added the remark about the womenfolk. They are a part of the community on an equality with men. They are put on the same level as men, and to criticise them in such a way is a slander upon them. I have nothing more to say, but I did not think that it would be fair to let this go unchallenged, as it would appear to the House that our women are worse than other women. I resent that.

Mr. Butler: There are several hares which I could pursue, some of them attractive and some of them very unattractive, but at this very late hour I will speak to the point which has been raised by the hon. Gentleman opposite. I am very glad to notice that he does not propose to challenge a Division upon the Prayer which he has moved. I think he has appreciated that the Regulations laid by my right hon. Friend will include some 170,000 new persons in unemployment insurance, and I think that it is an acknowledgment of that advance that he and his hon. and right hon. Friends have decided not to challenge a Division. I should like to acknowledge the attitude he has shown, and I feel sure that this is the general view of hon. Members as a whole.
The point at issue this evening concerns some 30,000 workers, who, it has been decided, shall not be included in these particular Regulations. All these 30,000 work in some domestic capacity in residential educational establishments. The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) is correct in saying that by no means all of them work in the colleges in what are known as the ancient or modern universities. Many of them work in residential schools, and he was right in bringing out that point with regard to our discussion. There has been a certain criticism of the exclusion of this type of domestic workers. They were included under the draft Regulations originally submitted to the Committee, but it was decided by the Government, on the advice of the Statutory Committee, to make these Regulations in the above sense. Therefore, this particular batch is not included on this occasion.

Mr. E. J. Williams: Not because they are malingerers?

Mr. Butler: No, certainly not. We considered the point very carefully indeed, and it is one upon which there is a balance of argument either way, and I frankly confess that it is an interesting and difficult point to decide. Therefore, it is in that spirit that we approach the position. I would like to make it quite clear that the fact that the hon. Member opposite does not wish to challenge a Division to-night, and the fact that we allow these Regulations to pass and so include some 170,000 in insurance, does not preclude the possibility of including this batch at a later date. I will give the assurance that we shall consider the case put forward and bear in mind this particular category in the future. Further than that I cannot go this evening.

Mr. A. V. Alexander: I am very interested in this matter because I gave evidence before the Statutory Committee upon this point. Will the Parliamentary Secretary say, after the Minister had decided to accept the advice of the Statutory Committee and lay the Regulations, what has moved him to accept their advice in this case? Surely, we are entitled to know why these persons axe excluded. It is not sufficient to tell us that it is the recommendation of the Statutory Committee.

Mr. Butler: I was about to give the reasons. The first reason is best described by the Statutory Committee itself on page 9 of their report, in which they say:
To push the boundaries of insurance as far forward as is proposed under the Draft Regulations would bring it into regions so similar to that of private domestic service as to produce indefensible anomalies on that border.
The Statutory Committee thought it would approximate too closely to private domestic service if we were to extend insurance to this particular class of work. That argument is borne out by further statements in the report, and also by the further consideration which the Government have given to the subject. We have found that the conditions of these workers approximate closely to domestic service in the private houses of the country, and, as hon. Members know, domestic service is not included in insurance. The work done in these residential educational establishments does approximate to the kind of work done in families and private houses. That is one aspect of the question. Another aspect is raised in a rather interesting statement made by Mrs. Stocks, a member of the Statutory Committee, in the "New Statesman," on Christmas Day last year, in which she said:
It appears from the evidence that hospitals and non-residential colleges recruit their staffs mainly from Employment Exchanges from workers who alternatively seek insured employment in hotels and restaurants, while residential schools and colleges draw mainly from the domestic servant class, who alternatively seek non-insured employment in private service. It is desirable, other things being equal, to avoid anomalies such as would arise, for instance, when workers go in and out of insured employment while continuing to perform the same type of work. It seems to the Statutory Committee that by drawing the boundaries of insurance in the way suggested such anomalies are likely to be minimised.
We have to draw the line somewhere, and private domestic service is not included. The conditions in residential educational establishments approximate as nearly as possible to private domestic service, and therefore the Government decided after anxious consideration that it was better to draw the line at that stage between non-residential and residential establishments, than to do it a little further down in a region in which conditions of work and recruitment more closely approximate.

Mr. Buchanan: In other words it was not because there has been any "scrounging" on the part of these people but because the Government felt that it approximated to ordinary domestic service?

Mr. Butler: That was our reason. I do not want to pursue that matter.

Mr. Buchanan: I think the hon. Member should make it clear that these people are not getting something for which they have not contributed.

Mr. Butler: I say again that I frankly accept the statement of the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot). There is a theory in the country that girls do, as has been described in this Debate, scrounge on the dole; I shall be very glad to say, in my official capacity to-night, that we do not accept that position at all.
The other reason that has been raised has been the more permanent employment of these persons in the Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. It was raised by the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson). I accept his philosophy on the subject that it is a pity to leave out good lives from insurance and to legislate so that you have only bad lives in the insurance scheme. My argument about the line to be drawn in the method of recruitment in those spheres of domestic work is one on which I would stand to-night, without entering on that broader subject on which we shall enter later.

Mr. Lawson: Do I understand that there is to be further consideration of these Regulations?

Mr. Butler: Not of these Regulations. I stand on what I said earlier. The fact that these Regulations are passed does not preclude the possibility of further considering these classes of workers. These Regulations should be passed as they are. For the most part, these classes have superannuation schemes and their future is carefully arranged by the colleges which they serve. The need for an insurance scheme is, therefore, not so vital in their case. Another objection to including this class of worker is the fear that in the Oxford and Cambridge colleges there might be a tendency to casualise employment by turning them off automatically in the summer months. These arguments have convinced the Government that at this stage it is wiser to draw the line where we have put it.
I trust therefore, that hon. Gentlemen opposite and others who are interested in this point will agree that it is wiser to let these Regulations go forward, substantially increase the number of insured, and allow these benefits to be enjoyed by this 170,000 class, and then to let the question be further considered, without prejudice to what decision may be taken in the future.

12.8 a.m.

Mr. Alexander: I want to thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour for the somewhat more detailed reasons he has given, although I am bound to say, having studied this matter rather carefully before I went before the Statutory Committee as governor of one of the London colleges, that I am disappointed at the situation that has arisen. The remark which the hon. Gentleman quoted about pushing the boundary of these cases to such an extent as to bring within the region of private domestic service the workers employed by the institutions, and thereby create an anomaly, has resulted in the adoption by the Government of the recommendations of the Statutory Committee. That creates the anomaly that 30,000 workers who have just as much right to be insured against insecurity as any of those in the nonresidential institutions are now to be excluded. That is a perfect anomaly. It seems totally unreasonable that these persons should not have the same protection as those in the other classes of institution.
The hon. Gentleman said something about a comparison of the residential employés with the non-residential showing that they are more related to private domestic service, because they are recruited from domestic service agencies and not from Employment Exchanges. If one looks at the staffs of most of the colleges which have put forward this point

of view, I do not think that can be substantiated. The staffs of those great institutions are composed of persons who are now excluded from insurance, but who are doing real manual work, although they are classed as domestic servants. The general work of the persons on the domestic staffs of those institutions cannot possibly be likened to the work of the small private household, employing from one to four men. Those who have visited these colleges—and certainly those hon. Members who have lived in them in a way which most of us have not had a chance of doing—know quite well that it is much nearer the standard of service of the first-class hotel than that of a small private domestic establishment. Insurance is given to hotel servants, but it is refused to servants in the large residential educational establishments. That is a complete anomaly. As the Parliamentary Secretary has kindly said that, while the Regulations stand to-night, they will be reconsidered, all I ask is that that reconsideration should be quick.

Question,
That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Unemployment Insurance (Insurable Employments) Regulations, which were presented to this House on the 22nd day of December, 1937, be annulled,

put, and negatived.

The remaining Orders of the Day were read, and postponed.

It being after Half-past Eleven of the Clock, upon Tuesday evening, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.)

Adjourned at Twelve Minutes after Twelve o'Clock.